Under the Sea Birthday Party – Part Two

Yesterday, I shared the invites and goody bags for Owen’s Under the Sea Birthday party.

Today, I’ll share the rest.

First…the decor.

I used all inexpensive things, crepe paper streamers, plastic table clothes, butcher paper, and card stock. I mean, I probably only spent about $7-8 on decorations all together.

It just took a bit more time to put it together.

Left to right:

– I hung blue streamers from the ceiling to mimic waves. We were under the sea after all. I didn’t do it too perfectly or straight, just kind of random like real waves would be.  The blue “bubbles” are card stock circles sewn together with really long thread tails which I used to tape them up with.

– The paper plates are just red plates from Walmart. I used red card stock to cut legs and hot glued them on.

The napkins are folded like the invitations were.

The table cloth is actually two. There is a dark blue one underneath. I then cut a light blue one in half and laid it across the middle as a table runner. I was going to cut it “wave” like but thought it would take too much time.

– For the back wall, I cut some tan butcher paper to look like sand. It only took a couple of yards so it was cheap, cheap. I then took green streamers and twisted them up the wall to look like seaweed. This doesn’t take as long as it looks. Promise. 🙂 But it does use a TON of tape.

Then…what took me the whole night before…

the cake of course.

I was SO sad when I woke up the next morning to find that the top started to slump and tear, but Owen didn’t mind. He did however inform me that squids actually have fins on their heads and have ten tentacles, not eight….I’m just glad it turned out as well as it did to be honest. 🙂

We added some easy kid food for lunch…

Owen actually loves seafood. I didn’t want to risk finding out his friends didn’t, so we kept it simple.

Goldfish crackers, squid dogs {see this post}, “star fish” sandwiches which were really PB&J cut out like stars, mozzarella shark teeth…

We called the skewered grapes “coral.” Owen actually did a lot of the skewering too. It was a great kid task.

We also had orange soda fish shaped ice cubes in blue kool-aid. I got a picture but it was blurry! Darn. You can kind of see it in the picture below. The fish ice cube mold is from IKEA.

With the table set, the party was ready to begin!

Lunch was first.

Then we made some snow globe aquariums. I originally got the idea from here.

They are just your standard DIY snowglobe but we let the sea animals float freely.

The sea animals came from the Dollar Tree.
Glycerin is from Michaels. Use a coupon, it’s pricey.
Then good ole dollar store glitter.

The jars are baby food jars. Since we don’t have a baby to eat it, I kept it to mix into other things. The bananas are a great addition to pancake batter. Squash, carrots and sweet potatoes are a great way to add more veggies to a plain spaghetti sauce.

The lids were all silver, so I just added a quick coat of silver acrylic paint to the tops and sides of the lids to cover up any writing.

Add your animal, a few dashes of glitter and glycerin (doesn’t take much), blue colored water all the way to the top and then hot glue the lids on.

Some lids took better than others, I’ll admit. Like Owen’s is fine but Reid’s is leaking so we keep it upright. I’m sure some kind of aqua seal adhesive would be better but that requires at least a full of day of curing and it’s toxic.

A tip: Mix up some blue water beforehand. To get a light enough blue you need like 2 drops per 1 quart. I think I diluted it even more after that even. If you add the food coloring straight to the jar, the water will be too dark.

Then it was time for games.

Don’t Eat Pete is a classic.

I made this game board up in Picnik. Feel free to save it to your computer and use it if you want. It is sized for 11×17 paper. I printed it on glossy card stock. When the party was over we hung it up in Owen’s door.

We also tried playing this seaweed balloon game. The object was to keep a balloon shark afloat with green seaweed balloons {balloon animal kind}. It turned into a wild balloon wrestling match. 🙂

So, we played Shark Attack (idea also from this site found here).

It’s basically like hot potato. We played the Jaws theme music while passing the balloon shark around. Whoever was holding the shark when the music stopped got “attacked” and had to leave the circle.

The kids loved this – for the most part (we still had some that had a hard time with getting attacked/losing). But it was fun enough that we played several rounds.

We also played a “land” version of sharks and minnows. This got too rowdy. I don’t really recommend it for an indoor party. 😉

The kids worked up enough appetite for cake, so that came next.

We had plenty of cake so I let the kids take as much as they wanted. I wasn’t too surprised when they didn’t finish it.  Most of them wanted to just eat the fondant tentacles anyway. 🙂

And that’s a wrap. After cake was presents, and then free play time.

It was a great party and Owen loved it. In fact he’s already started making requests for his next party! Yikes…I’m wiped out. Good thing birthdays only come once a year! (…and I’m not pregnant and tired for every birthday.)

P.S. If you’re not quite partied out yet, check me out tomorrow at Kimberly’s party week series. She’s got guests sharing their party tips and other fun party ideas all this week and next week. See you there!