How to throw a Little Mermaid party

Several weeks ago, I asked my daughter what kind of party she would like to have for her upcoming birthday. She responded, "A Little Mermaid party!" With that I began the planning invitations and decor with an under the sea theme. Invitations came first. I wanted something with a mermaid on it, I didn't care if it was Ariel, it just had to be a mermaid. As I suspected, I was unable to find anything in the stores except for invites with pictures of all of the Disney princesses. When I was unsuccessful at the store, I started searching online. I found a really cute one that a lady had made for her daughter by cutting and pasting her daughters face onto the body of a mermaid with fish and sea animals floating in the background. I searched for something that would be suitable to paste my daughters face on and couldn't find anything. Luckily, I was reminiscing and looking through old photos and happend upon one of my daughter sitting on the front of our boat in her swimsuit and sunglasses. I decided that I could just print the photo out onto cardstock and attach a paper mermaid tail.

When I finished the mock up of the first card, I showed it to my daughter. She squealed, "I have a mermaid tail! That's so funny!" I knew that it was perfect because she couldn't wait to deliver them to family members.
Once the invitations were finished, I moved onto decor. I was thinking simple seashells and sea animals created out of craft paper. While looking through a paper crafting book at work, I came across animals made using paper and toilet paper tubes. The book showed a crab and I decided to make an octopus and seahorse as well. I covered the toilet paper tubes in colored paper and then added claws and eyes for the crab, 8 legs for the octopus and a cutout seahorse. I then attached a string and hung them from the light fixtures with some green crepe paper for seaweed.


While coloring with the kids one night, I noticed several pages of fish and sea animals. I ripped the pages out, got some crayons and went to work (coloring has always been one of my favorite activities). Once they were taped to the closet door, I draped some green crepe paper seaweed in front of them.

Hello Mr. Crab!

I had several small fish, crabs and seahorses left and decided that I would tape them to the kitchen cabinets. I dug through my gift wrap and found some shiny blue tissue paper and cut it to fit the insets of my cabinets. Then I cut some seaweed out of 2 different colors of paper. Layering it all together really made the kitchen look festive!



With everything decorated, the final piece of the party was the cake. I researched online and finally saw an idea for a large rectangular base cake frosted in blue to represent water with a smaller circular cake frosted and covered in graham crackers to look like an island. We topped ours with a mermaid doll from the Dollar Store.

I wish that I would have added a palm tree or something, but it was pretty cute and most importantly, Reese loved it!
I had so much fun planning this party and putting everything together. I honestly can't wait for the next one, except that will mean that Reese will be yet another year older!