Over the weekend we had Annabelle’s birthday, and it turned out fabulous! This year Annabelle decided she wanted a “Little Mermaid” themed party, so I tried to have everything revolve around the sea, and I have to say it came together quite nicely. Now if you don’t know this about me, I’m for sure what you would call a “Pinterest Mom”, and love planning a sweet party. I also love trying to do as much of it myself as possible because #imcheap. This is a little bit of a longer post, so sit back with a cup of whatever you like to drink, and enjoy!
To start off with I knew I needed something awesome on the chalkboard. I always use the chalkboard wall as my focal point, so I wanted something cool and mermaid related. I looked up some Little Mermaid quotes and “who says that my dreams have to stay just my dreams” came up a lot. Now don’t ask me where in the movie Ariel says that, ’cause I couldn’t tell you, but I really like the quote. I sketched it out on paper, then put on the chalkboard. I am pretty impressed with how it turned out, so I’m going to continue bragging a bit about it. I also think it will be up for quite some time.
I also knew that I needed to change up the pictures around the chalkboard (you can check out this post about how I did my mini gallery wall). They were still Christmas, and well, since it was March I knew they needed to go. so I wanted some sort of water themed pictures to go in the frames. As I was perusing Pinterest I came across lots of watercolor. Then I remembered that you could create some pretty cool pictures using crayons and watercolor. So I drew sea related pictures (after asking Annabelle what she wanted me to draw), then allowed her to watercolor them (with some gentle suggestions on colors that remind her of the sea). She also painted a mermaid, and used celery to stamp scales on a fish.
You can also see that I made a balloon arch, because can you really call it a party without one?? I didn’t take pictures of making the arch, since it’s pretty easy (and there are tons of tutorials around). Basically I took took covered chicken wire and cut about a 6ft length. I then cut it in half length wise so it was a bit skinnier. After that I rolled it into a cylinder then hung it on the wall with 3M hooks. Thankfully my neighbor came over and helped my blow up the balloons (using a pump I had to blow up a yoga ball).
Next up the sweets. If you’ve followed my blog for a while, then you know that I love decorating sugar cookies. A few years ago I discovered royal icing and have been hooked ever since. I made cookies for people to snack on during the party, and also an Ariel cookie to put in the goodie bags.
I really like how the square cookies with the 5 and A turned out. Royal icing can be tricky, and I somehow managed to get just the right consistency with those. It was magical folks!
The Little Mermaid cookies didn’t turn out quite how I planned, but I made them work (I think). You can check the directions out to those here. These all got wrapped up and placed into the goody bags.
Also on the food table were the cupcakes (complete with fondant mermaid tails). I probably should have done blue frosting and purple tails, but they were still tasty!
I put grapes on skewers to make “seaweed”
I also made a “sea water punch” using blue Hawaiian Punch, Pineapple juice, and Sprite, and “Ursula Tentecals” by dipping pretzel rods in purple candy melts, but it appears I forgot to take a picture.
This was one of the first bigger birthday parties Annabelle had. When planning it, I didn’t know if I needed to have tons of activities, or if the kids could just play with our toys. I decided on doing two simple activities, a paint your own cookie, and pin the fork in Ariel’s hair.
The paint your own cookie went over really well! While there are super fancy ones online, I went with simple since the kids were five. To make these I simply flooded a sugar cookie with white royal icing and let it dry. To make the paint palette made royal icing dots, let them dry, then painted them with a few coats of gel food coloring mixed with some water. After they dried I used royal icing to attach them to to the rectangular cookie.
The kids all had a blast, although I think my friend who also came (the same one who went roller skating with us) liked it the most. 😉 She’s a pretty artistic person.
We also played pin the fork in Ariel’s hair, which was super humorous to watch.
And of course what birthday party would be complete without a fun dress?? As a child I remember that the little girls always used to wear poofy, frilly dresses to all the parties. I also remember the one time I was super itchy before leaving to go to a party, only to have my mom lift up my dress to find chicken pox. Needless to say I did not go to that party (and was quite upset that I couldn’t go. The mom later brought me a piece of cake and goody bag, which was super nice). At any rate, I ended up making Annabelle an Ariel dress, and I love how it turned out! Thankfully she loved it too. 🙂 Once again, I’m going to get a separate tutorial post up for that dress.
Overall I would say that the party was a success! Everyone seemed to have tons of fun. 🙂