Celebrate Under The Sea

Our sweet “P” just turned 5 and similar to last year she started daydreaming about her party months in advance. My party planning obsession has clearly rubbed off on my girls over the years as they now know the first step in planning is to choose a theme.

P is our little dreamer and loves all things girly these days. Last year it was all about unicorns, and this time around it was the year of the mermaid. Here she is with her idol at Disney in the summer and at home all dressed up as Ariel.

She even asked to start her own Pinterest board to gather the inspiration for her party. Yes, my heart literally skipped a beat!

We decided to take P, her sister and a few friends to the movies and then come back to the house for homemade pizzas and cake. I wanted to keep decorating to a minimum and decided to just create a focal point around the dining room table where the girls would spend most of their time.

To set the scene, I gathered found objects from around the house that would fit my theme and used them to create an underwater inspired table scape.

I started with an inexpensive plastic tablecloth in the perfect shade of aqua blue. I then layered a few pieces of beachy driftwood, some succulents in short glass vessels, and scattered various seashells down the centre of the table.

To represent our mermaid treasure, I picked up chocolate coins wrapped in shiny foil that matched my chosen colour palette of pretty pinks, cool blues, and soft purples. I also made the girls’ pearl necklaces out of gumballs and mixed these among the other sea inspired elements.

To make the gumball necklaces I purchased pearlescent white gumballs from Party City. I placed a piece of dense foam under the gumball and poked a hole through the centre using a sharp wooden skewer. I then threaded seven gumballs onto a piece of aqua ribbon and tied with a bow. I had originally planned to do this with the girls as a craft but it proved to be rather challenging to poke the holes and also thread the ribbon, so I decided to just make them myself in the end.

For the place settings, I used small white side plates and layered them on top of a pretty white doily. I then placed a cute aqua polka dot napkin on top and a matching aqua fork, aka “dinglehopper” (for Little Mermaid fans). I then tied them with a tag printed with each of the girls names. I set a faux starfish on our birthday girl’s plate to help her feel extra special.

The girls and I decorated a vanilla and chocolate layered cake with aqua tinted vanilla icing. We then decorated the top and bottom border with little pearl chocolate confections in pink, blue and white, and topped it with a cute mermaid cutout. The cake sat on a blue pedestal cake stand and P’s Ariel doll took centre stage alongside the cake.

For the cake topper, I purchased a group of mermaid clip art images from Digital Doll Face on Etsy and used them to make these adorable cutouts that adorned the top of the cake along with the number 5. I printed the cutout on a colour printer and taped them to a candy stick.

I put three more down the table inserted into the plant vessels so it would look like mermaids swimming in our underwater scene. I am absolutely in love with this artist’s collection of illustrations and can’t wait to find more uses for them!

To complement our cake we also made the cutest little clam cookies you ever did see. I just bought store-bought vanilla wafer cookies and iced the bottom one with a dollop of pink-tinted vanilla icing. We then placed a tiny pearl chocolate (Party City) inside and topped with the second wafer. They were so easy to make, my girls had a blast helping me assemble them. We placed them on a bed of brown sugar to look like sand. Adorable!

I also used the mermaid clip art to create the birthday invitation and thank you tags for our favour bags. The girls each took home a pearl gumball necklace, a few chocolate coins, a sea themed beanie boo and a mermaid apron.

The girls love beanie boos and at only $5 a piece from Party City they make a really affordable and special take home favour. We found sea horses, turtles, dolphins and octopus to go with our underwater theme. So sweet!

With each party I host for my girls I always take on one special project that is a little over the top. This time it was the mermaid apron. You can read more about how I made them here.