Sock Monkey Party

Two years ago my daughter was REALLY into monkeys.  We decided to do a sock monkey party (she still loves sock monkeys two years later).  This party was probably the most labor intensive party I have ever done.  I made 14 sock monkeys before the party.  The sewing is not that bad, it is stuffing all of those arms, legs and tails and then hand sewing them to the body.  The faces take a bit of time also.  I purchased the socks when I found them.  Her birthday is in the spring so Kohls had their knee socks on sale.  This would need to be started a couple of months in advance or 3-4 days of all day sewing.  When we got closer to the party I had my mom and older daughter helping me finish up!  This is the picture we used to make the invitations to the party.  I just went to CVS or Walmart and did one of the picture invitations.

When I completed each monkey then I gave each one a personality.  I wrote on a piece of paper a little something about each monkey.  An example would be (my name is bananas and I love swimming, knitting and eating banana splits.  My best friend is Ethel).  I then used string to tie each of the little personalities to the monkeys. Here is the important part:  Every friend must have a friend so if you use banana and Ethel from the example, then you need to have one monkey named Ethel that says her best friend is banana.  Does that make sense?  I thought I had this all down and even double checked but we still had one error that was fixable.  More on that is just a bit.

 I wish I had taken a picture of this but in all the confusion I didn't.  I got a HUGE basket and piled all the sock monkeys in there.  They looked cute with all of the arms and tails etc hanging out of them.

While I was getting the basket ready I put my older daughter in charge of helping them play pin the tail on the monkey.  I ended up just making this myself.  I used felt and found a picture of a cute monkey and free handed it onto the felt.  Then added the clothes and made a bunch of tails.

Each child then got to pick out their own sock monkey from the basket.  Reagan had picked hers out in advance and it was set to the side.  This admittedly was a bit crazy!  I don't know if it is better to hand out the monkeys or let everyone pick their own.  We did not have any arguments  but I can see that could possibly be a problem since no two were alike.

Once everyone got their monkey then they read the tags and had to find their monkeys best friend.  Here was my error!  I had one monkey who said her best friends name but then no other monkey with that name...ackkkkk!  We fixed it by having one group have friends of three!  You could also do this if you had an odd number of kids.  When all the kids found their monkey friends we then took pics of them together.

We then let them hang out and talk about their monkeys with each other for a bit and then it was on to the next part.   Dressing our monkeys!  I made each monkey a pillow case dress.  Just two rectangles to fit the monkey, looped over a piece at the top to thread some ribbon through and tied.  Very basic!  I also expected a couple of boys at the party and my grandmother came up with a little tie that had elastic threaded through it!  I wish we had made more of these!  Everyone wanted one.... who would have ever guessed.  Each outfit was put into a ziploc baggie and laid out on the table.  A dress for each girl and a tie and hat for the boys.  Then they dressed their monkeys and we took pics.  They had a great time with this

Once again we had no gift bags.  Everyone took home their monkey and its clothes.  My daughter STILL has this monkey.  It has gone with us to doctors appointments, vacations and even just running errands.  It has had many repairs and re-stuffings but it is well worth it!!!