Mermaid Themed Birthday Party

Over the summer, our Kendall turned 4 and she insisted on having an Ariel themed birthday party. Who am I to deny my little red head of that!?!

I created an under the sea/mermaid themed party using a purple and teal color palette. I really like this color palette and I'm trying to convince Kendall that she needs this to be the decor in her new bedroom once our house is complete. But that's a different blog post all on its own.

Once I decided on the color palette, I set out scouring Pinterest to find some inspiration. I'll admit, I'm not a "create fun things in my own mind" type of person. But I can copy the heck out of stuff on Pinterest that other creative people have already come up with. Which is exactly what I did for the decor of her party. #worksmarternotharder

The decor:

My favorite part of the decor was the jelly fish that I made out of paper lanterns, streamers and ribbon. This project was a labor of love and it took me six hours to make six jelly fish. I did not know when I started out that it would take so long to complete, but the finished product was completely worth it. They turned out so pretty. I mostly used this tutorial (#5) to create them. We strung the jelly fish between the trees in our front yard to help make it feel like the party was underwater with the jelly fish swimming above us. We also purchased some bubble machines to help with the underwater feel.

For the back drop to the food table I used a fishnet (found it at Michael's) and filled it with balloons. It turned out great! And I must give a HUGE shoutout to my sister and Tolar for their help in setting this up - they had serious MacGyver skills with getting the net to stay! Then I added some starfish and "dinglehoppers" to the net to complete the Ariel feel.

The party favors were fun and easy. I found blue, green and purple shovels and filled them with "pearls" aka skittles. I tied them up in pretty teal organza bags and called it done!

The food:

The food table was a lot of fun to set up. I always like to have theme names for the food and we really enjoyed coming up with names for everything. We had:
Seaweed - green grapes on kabobs
Shark Bait -potato chips and goldfish (displayed in sand buckets)
Driftwood - pretzel sticks
Peanut Butter and Jellyfish sandwiches
Sea Snails - pigs in a blanket
Seaweed Dip - spinach dip
Whosits and Whatsits - veggie tray
My mom made the most amazing Ariel cake! She used to make cakes for birthday parties all the time when I was a child, so I asked her to try her hand (27 years later!) at making another cake and she rocked it!

The entertainment:

We set out our blow up pool and slip n slide for the kids to enjoy. They had a blast in the pool and barely used the slip n slide - we definitely underestimated the power of nine kids, some water guns and a blow up pool! I also included a photo booth which was a huge hit (especially among the adults). Tolar and I hung streamers on our garage along with an Ariel birthday sign that I found at Party City. My mother in-law brought a life size Ariel balloon that really completed the whole theme. Then I spray painted an old picture frame that we had and created a few props (to include Sebastian and Flounder). I don't think I will ever host another birthday party without a photo booth because the pictures were so fun.