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Under the Sea Party

Birthday time! I'm excited to share another playful party with you. Get ready to dive under the sea with the mermaids and fishies!

During the weeks leading up to the party, I reserved a bunch of children's picture books from our local library about ocean life. I was excited to immerse the girls in this new topic and teach them about the wonders of the sea. They now recognize the names of several sea creatures, where they live, and what they eat. 

Our favorites include: 
  • The Usborne Big Book of Sea Creatures,  Has large fold-out pages and realistic illustrations of the ocean life.
  • Little Sea Turtle. A tiny finger puppet board book with a short story about the life of a sea turtle.
  • The Secrets of the Seashore , From the "Shine a Light" series of Usborne books. The kids loved holding the pages up to the window to find the hidden creatures living in their habitats.
  • What Will I Be? Peek under each flap to see how the butterfly, polar bear, turtle, frog, and bird develop. 

Instead of buying pre-made party decorations, I like to make my own. Now, this takes a TON of time, but we started early and built it into our crafting days at home. The girls absolutely LOVE projects. If they could do a craft project every hour, they would.

We made these jelly fish out of paper bowls. The girls helped color/paint the tops of the jellies, then I hot glued coffee filters and ribbons to the bottoms. 


Ok, let's talk about the mermaids. I found this simple mermaid tail tutorial on pinterest. The sequin fabric was 4.99/yard at Hobby Lobby and I used coordinating fabric from my stash for the underside. A ribbon sewn at the top wraps around and ties at their waist to secure the tail. The plan was to have the girls wear the tails for the party, but we forgot.The tails will be great additions to our dress ups, though! The template for the paper mermaid cut-outs is here.


Lunch for our guests was croissant crab sandwiches, ocean wave jello cups and fruit salad (with star fruit!) along with sides of  octopus dip, and a sand pail full of cheese fish crackers. As a family we try to avoid sugary beverages, so we've been making fruit infused water instead. For this party, we tried a tropical mix of orange, pineapple and starfruit slices.

For dessert, gummy crabs and oyster cookies (some of which became cupcake toppers). Walmart sold edible googly eyes in their party isle which were great to use for the gummy crabs. I made the sandwich eyes the night before the party using a hole punch, black marker for the eye dot and hot glued on the toothpicks. The Oyster cookies were made from vanilla wafers, pink frosting and pearl chocolate Sixlets (found in Woodmans baking isle).




The 3D sign in the background is actually an Illustration assignment from my college years (with a few tweaks). Had to dig through my old portfolio folders in the storage to find it. I'm glad I kept it for all these years! It fit in great with our under the sea theme.  

A three layer cake of different shades of blue was covered in white frosting and topped with sand (crushed gram crackers).



After signing "Happy Birthday" to our birthday girl, she took a bite (or two) of her cake, then quickly started opening her gifts. She was thrilled with all the accessories, bling and stickers. 



My mom decoupaged this glamorous jewelry box for Cici. Beads, pearls, shells and other small treasures are glued onto the drawers and lid. Each drawer held a special surprise.



The girls helped me decorate the downstairs for the party. We hung an octopus on the ceiling with a few fishy friends next to him. The accordion fish were hung from fishing line and brought color to our dining room. 

  

Themed parties from past birthdays:
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