Under The Sea Mermaid Themed Birthday Party

Well, it's official, I am now the parent of a 5 year old.  Crazy!!  I'm not really sure how that possibly could have happened in what -- to me--only felt like approximately 2 seconds!!  But it's true, my little Y has is half a decade and we threw a glam fabulous hand-crafted Mermaid/Under The Sea themed party to celebrate.

I have this horrible inability to really get anything done until it's crunch time, so I spent the 2 nights before the party crafting like crazy!  I had 3 hyper kittens to keep me company (i.e. try to destroy everything and anything I made out of tissue paper) and was able to watch an entire season of Daria during these late night crunch sessions, so it could have totally been worse :P

So the first and favorite DIY decoration I want to share is the paper lantern jellyfish.  I first saw it here via pinterest and LOVED the idea!  At the beginning of this month I also happened to be in Ikea where they sell these awesome half-round paper lanterns for only $6 bucks a piece!!  Woohoo!  Of course, they needed eyes (everything is cute/better with eyeballs :P haha  look at the blogname, folks! )  So I used craft foam to create gigantic eyes and eyelashes and hot glued them on!  My honey hung them from the ceiling using command hooks (my favorite) and elastic string so they sorta bounced around ever so slightly :)  Seriously, I love these!  As I'm typing this it's been 3 days since the party and they're still hanging in my living room . . . can't bring myself to take them down just yet :P  

I created two focal walls for the party.   The first is my entryway wall (where I usually have all my family photos).  I took down all the frames and covered the wall with 3 rows of shiny, reflective turquoise blue wrapping paper (2 rolls at $3.99 each from Hobby Lobby).  I then covered it with sea creatures I made out of glittered scrapbook paper ($0.99/sheet from Joann Fabric) all with googly eyes (of course!) and seaweed AKA ruffled crepe paper streamers (2 rolls-one in each shade of green at $1.00 each from Hobby Lobby).  I hot glued everything to the wrapping paper, pretty easy and pretty cheap!  

The second wall I did was behind the food table.  I used a pretty aqua velvet fabric piece as the backdrop and safety pinned two columns of plastic greenery (the greenery was my splurge at $17.50 for the piece, that I split into 2 . . . oh it was painful to cut something so expensive :P haha).  I then hot glued saftey pins to these fabulous plastic sea creatures from Oriental Trading and  pinned them to the fabric as if they were swimming in the seaweed.  

The centerpiece is just a piece of cardboard with 8 layers of fringed tissue paper!  I am, btw, now in love with making tissue paper fringe!  If you have a rotary cutter you can make it so quick and easy!  Plus, I just used ugly tape across the top of each layer and it didn't matter because the tops are totally covered by the layer above them!  The letters were cut using my Cricut and I just hand sewed embroidery thread through the top of each one to make the banner.  

The menu:

Whale Crackers

Starfish Sandwiches (vegetarian Chicken Salad)

Clam Cookies (btw they have the alomette cookies at the Dollar store! and also I found pearl white sixlets at Hobby Lobby)

Octopus Cake Balls (which the rockstar girlfriend of my litter brother completely made for me)

Mermaid Punch (not shown)

And, of course, the cake:

Can you deal with how pretty that is?  Okay, so I totally came to the realization a couple of weeks ago that while I can make/decorate OK cakes and I could probably do my own, that it would take me forever and I would never do it as beautiful as my sweet friend, Tami from Wishes of Whimsy.  She is awesome!  So, I decided to stick to my strong points and outsource my cake to my friend.  And boy am I glad I did!  I showed here this picture from HWTM and asked her to make it one layer instead of two.  I love what she gave me even more than the inspiration picture!  That's edible glitter gumpaste making up those seaweed pieces and the number!  When she delivered this beauty to me the night before I happily hung up my cake decorating apron for good :)  Tap into your creative friend resources, mama's!  You don't have to do it all!  

I could have cried when I cut it open to see she even went to the trouble of making it an ombre' layered cake.  I secretly wished for that, but did not ask, she read my mind!

  

For activities, the kids made ocean themed terrariums using dollar store hinged jars, river rock, cactus soil, succulent plants, brightly colored aquarium rocks and small sea-shells.

I had intended to also have a carnival style fishing game for goodie bags using a tension rod in a doorway draped with a large crinkly blue fabric but just plain ran out of time!  

All in all a successful party and bittersweet day for this mama :)

I'm linking up with:
Gingerly Made
Gingersnap Crafts
Sugar & Dots
Lil Luna
Katie's Nesting Spot
Somewhat Simple
House of Hepworths
The 36th Avenue
The Frugal Girls

504 Main
Sun Scholars
Today's Creative Blog