This post should really be named "How to Throw an Amazing Under the Sea Birthday Party for Kids Using Pinterest Ideas" but I thought that might be a little lengthy. Okay so here it goes. My daughter, Lana, is turned three this month. She is absolutely obsessed with octopuses and sharks and whales and dolphins. So the logical thing to do for her birthday party this year was an under the sea theme. First we started out by sending out socktopus invitations to her little friends. I posted about these earlier but I'll put in a pic so we don't miss any of the details of the party.
Of course we attached a little birthday invite and hand delivered them. This was Lana's first party with friends instead of just family so it was pretty much a big deal. The next thing I did was make a plan of attack for decorating the house. I wanted to use an idea that I saw on Pinterest about using scrapbooking paper to cut out animal shapes to decorate a room. So I googled some coloring pages on fish, sharks, octopuses etc., printed them out on card stock to make a template, then traced it onto some scrapbooking paper. I cut out the various aquatic animals and decorated them with googly eyes. Then I taped blue tissue paper up to cover all the dining room walls and taped the sea creatures to it - adding some sand and plant life around the bottom. Ta-da! Instant dining room turned ocean floor! Next we took the idea of stringing balloons onto fishing line to create lanterns (Pinterest) and instead used it instead to make "bubbles" on the ceiling and a "sea curtain" door.
Luckily right after I decided to go with an ocean theme for the party I happened upon some clearance fish dishes at Walmart. Snapped them up for the ocean nibbles buffet! The kids each got to take one of the sectioned fish plates home as part of their favor. The menu? Jell-O Jiggler fish and starfish, veggie tray, meat and cheese tray, goldfish crackers, pretzels, gummy sharks, Swedish fish... tried to squeeze as much ocean-themed stuff in there as possible. For the punch I got some blue Hawaiian Punch and poured some it the night before into a fluted bundt pan. Plopped some Swedish fish in there to have fish "swimming" in the "ocean." Nice bonus was that as the ice ring melted it didn't dilute the punch because it was... well punch!
And of course we had the cake! I dabble in cake decorating so I decided to practice some figure modeling this year. And some chocolate molds. It all came together quite nicely. Yellow cake bottom, strawberry cake top with buttercream frosting, vanilla wafer "sand," chocolate lollipop aquatic life and of course Lana and her octopus topper! The kids loved the fact that they could eat the sea creatures!
Okay that covers the decorations and food. Now for the party games! I just took some good old classics and gave them an ocean twist. First up: Ocean Bean Bag Toss! This game was super easy to do. My Mom and I had made Lana some bean bags to play with out of some bed sheets awhile back. My husband bought some black poster board and drew the ocean design on it with Sharpie paint. We actually kept this to continue playing with after the party!
Next was painting wooden fish. The fish we got at Michaels for a dollar a piece! They came with paintbrushes too! Of course I do recommend that if you are indoors to cover your floors (we covered ours in newspaper and butcher paper) and have smocks for the kids to wear (we used some of Daddy's old work shirts). Then just give them some paint and let them go! We let the finished products dry on the kitchen counter for the remainder of the party and then put them in the kid's gift bags for each child to take home.
Next game was Pin the Ice Cream Cone on the Octopus. I had an old poster from my Mom's teaching days of an octopus. I simply cut out some cones from scrapbooking paper and attached it to the octopus with double-sided tape. Then I cut out an ice cream scoop for each kid, labeling it with their initials to be able to tell who's was who's in the end. We blind-folded the kid's with a scarf. The kids did really great with this!
And the big finale was Oceans in a Bottle directly from Pinterest. I was concerned about this activity because it could have gotten very messy and after the painting activity the floor cover had to be trashed. But the kids listened and followed the instructions to the letter. It was the hit of the party. I do recommend pre-measuring the "ingredients" out for the kids. And dollar store funnels to have for each kid is a must! I did a couple test runs beforehand to see how much of each thing was needed for the bottles I had bought. It was so much easier just to hand out the cups for the kids to pour into the bottles! Smooth sailing!
Ocean in a Bottle
18 ounce beverage container
10 shells per container
1/4 cup sand
Green and blue food coloring
Silver glitter
Water
Mineral or baby oil
Hot glue gun
- Pour sand and shells into clean bottle.
- Mix a drop of blue and green food coloring into 6 cups of water, then fill the bottle halfway.
- Add a pinch of glitter.
- Fill the rest of the bottle with oil, leaving a little air space at the top.
- Run a bead of hot glue around the bottle opening and screw the lid on quickly.
And that was my daughter's super awesome ocean-themed birthday party. I'm glad that it was a success and the kids all had a great time. Me and Daddy definitely need a year to regroup and gear up for the next one.
Happy third birthday Lana! We love you!
No comments:
Post a Comment