When my little sweetie turned 6, she asked if she could have a Little Mermaid birthday party with a few of her friends at our house. I have had a great time planning parties for my daughters.
We've had a Rapunzel party, a Winter themed party, an Art Party and a Pirate party which have all been really fun!
I'm all about doing parties at home, making decorations, and finding simple and inexpensive crafts and activities. I've never had to spend a lot of money to fill a couple of hours with plenty of fun things. So - here you can see some of the ways we made our back yard an Under the Sea wonderland!
I love taking pictures of the partygoers, so as with many of the other parties I've thrown I try to make some sort of background. First, I cut a blue plastic tablecloth into scalloped strips and taped those onto a lighter blue plastic tablecloth. (The dollar store was pretty much the only place I had to shop for this party!). The bubbles are white card stock circles sewn together, and the green seaweed is twisted crepe paper.
My favorite are all the fish, starfish and seahorses. The girls made pretty watercolor patterns on cardstock - covered the whole page in pretty designs, and when they were dry I cut out all sorts of fish shapes from those pages. It was great to have the girls involved in making decorations!
Another decoration they helped with were these cute jellyfish. We glued colorful circles onto paper bowls, and then hung streamers, ribbon and curling ribbon from the inside.
Some white balloons on twine were another twist on bubbles, and added a fun birthday feel.
The invitations were similar to the fish decorations.
I had the girls paint half sheets of cardstock in pretty watercolors
I went over the watercolors with sparkle ModPodge, and cut out an oyster shape that I could fold in half to form a card...
Then, I printed the party information onto pretty paper and pasted it on the inside. A few oceany stickers on the outside, and these pretty invitations were ready to send!
We started off the party with some arts and crafts (of course). I like doing this, because it gives friends a chance to be working on something while everyone is filtering in.
I got little treasure chest boxes from the craft store, and had watercolors and stickers out for decorating. The watercolors worked great on the wood, and afterward we spread some sparkle modpodge over the top to seal in the colors and add some sparkle!
It was really fun to see their creativity! Then, while they were waiting for things to dry, or waiting for other friends to finish painting, we painted their fingernails with "mermaid colors" - pink and teal.
After crafting, we played a few fun games. One was blowing bubble snakes with these homemade bubble blowers. A water bottle, an old sock and some duck tape are all you need to provide endless bubble entertainment! A little dish soap water made these super sudsy, and easy for even my 2 year old to use. I found the tutorial here at Housing a Forest blog.
We also did the limbo - my daughter's request - with little seaweed streamers hanging from the pole and some Little Mermaid music. Pretty cute.
Another request is always "pin the something" game. We did pin the starfish on the mermaid - which my girls helped me paint onto a poster board.
One of my favorite games was a treasure hunt, complete with treasure map!
I thought it would be fun for the kids to treasure hunt for their party favors. We got buckets and a couple of goodies for each person from the dollar store. I stuck on a tag that said "Next time you go to the sea, take this bucket and think of me! Thanks for coming!"
Then, I hid the treasure under a towel with an X marks the spot.
I made a treasure map (which took quite a bit of time actually... but it was fun). The map had the first clue, and everyone got their own copy.
The first clue directed them to the hose, where they found the second clue. Each person got a copy of each clue to tape onto their map. We had to make the girls promise they would wait for everyone :) That was a little lesson in patience, but it worked just fine.
I taped the clues onto wax paper so the tape would come off easily and be ready to put on their map.
On and on they went, finding clues, and taping them to their maps, until they finally found their treasure! It was great also to have them take turns sounding out the words of the clues (their little Kindergarten brains were working pretty hard for this treasure!) ;)
They searched in trees, in bushes, under chairs, in pots - thank heaven we could have this party outside, it worked so well!
And here are the cuties with their treasures!
And then of course there was cake and snacks! There are sooo many great ideas for a sea party - but here are the few I went with.
I used those colored chocolate melty candies to pipe a mermaid tail shape onto wax paper. A few hours in the freezer and they were hard and perfect for diving into the cupcakes.
Add a little blue frosting, and these mermaid tail cupcakes turned out adorable.
Some blue Jellyfish Jello with a swedish fish inside...
Pretzel Driftwood...
I added some old wood and twine to the table to add to the beach look. The little lifesavers tied to the twine looked like little shells, and my daughter loved them.
Seawater punch was made with:
equal parts blue Hawaiian punch and sprite
plus frozen pineapple juice concentrate (to taste)
and I added a few scoops of vanilla ice cream to the top for sea foam.
It was yummy!
Goldfish crackers are kindof a must at a sea party.
A simple setup - perfect for Kindergarteners to enjoy!
The party was a ton of fun, and this was just the right amount planned for the two hours all the friends were here. We even had a tub of play sand and sand toys ready if we had extra time, but we never even got to those.
During the party, I made sure to take pictures of the birthday girl with her friends.
First I had them wrap her up in seaweed. They LOVE doing this -each taking turns to wrap a couple of times - and it makes such a cute picture!
And of course they all wanted to be wrapped up after that.
I also took individual pictures of the seaweed wrapped birthday girl with each friend. Then, I printed a group picture and the individual picture for each friend, to send along with their thank you note.
I printed a little phrase onto half a page of cardstock that I folded in half to form a card. Then my daughter draw a mermaid on the front cover, above the words - "It was good to sea you. We had a splash!" Didn't they turn out cute!?
I helped her figure out what to say on the inside, and she wrote out each and every card. I love having my kids write their own thank you notes. Not only is it great handwriting practice, but it really helps them learn to show gratitude for gifts and friends.
Happy birthday to my sweet daughter - and good luck next time you throw your own birthday party!
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