Under the Sea 2nd birthday party!!

My daughter recently turned 2 (Where does the time go??) and we decided to have an Under the Sea themed party! I usually start planning for my kids parties months in advance and really feel like I dropped the ball on this party with that. I had to cram everything into the week of the party, but I still think it turned out pretty good.

I am sure the first thing you notice when you look at that photo is the cake!! The cake was done by my friend Misty of Misty's Cake Box. I got to help a little with the cake and thought it was a lot of fun but that was only because Misty had done most of the boring base work when I started helping. We found some help on how to make this cake from The Artisan Cake Company. This cake was huge! Here is my daughter standing next to it so you can see just how big it is! 

Of course I had to have cookies... and I had a ton of them! I always do! I feel like you can't go to a party hosted by someone that makes cookies and not have a ton of them there! My family and friends love my cookies and they don't get them that often... so I try to make up for it at the parties. I had to try to keep them fairly simple and quick, so I used my airbrush for a lot of them.

If you have seen my posts before about my parties... you have probably noticed I like to have games. This party was no different. I had three. One was called Pin the Fin. I just took the image from my daughters birthday invitation and blew it up on a poster. I taped the posted to foam board and made a few fins. The older kids were blindfolded but we let the younger ones just put it on there.My daughter loved it! 

The prize for this game was a small bag of goldfish with a bag tag I made to match the poster.

The second game was Drop the Shark in the Tank. I found the idea for that game here. I couldn't find the pins she used so I just had to improvise. 

The prize for this game was a package of shark gummi snacks I found at Kroger. 

The last game was sort of a last minute thing (since I waited so long to get started on her party). I just found a little fishing game at my local Dollar Tree and let them play that. I called it Catch the Sea Creature. 

The prize for this game was a cup of water and 2 of those little capsules that disintegrate and have  those little sponges inside. I had the sea creature themed ones. 

The kids were also able to make sand necklaces. I have lots of different color sand and the kids got to choose which shape necklace they wanted to make. 

I made tags for all the food as well. I only got a chance to take a photo of the dessert table, but for the food we had Octo-dogs (hot dogs cut to look like octopus), Sand dollars (Chips for nachos), Shark Teeth (mozzarella cheese cut into triangles), and we even had boiled shrimp and crabs! 

The beverage I made for the punch dispenser was Ocean Water. Everyone seemed to like it and said it tasted just like the one from Sonic. 

Here are a few items from the dessert table:

and we of course had goldfish snack crackers too.

For the party favors, my husband and I made these

 they are soap with little fish in them. I followed the instructions from here to make them but ended up modifying a little as we went along since we found things that worked a little better for us. 

The party was a swim party and this suit just screamed mermaid so I had to get it! I got Kajun Monograms to personalize it for me.

I had taped sea creatures to the ceiling of the carport and also bought a small bubble machine and had that going throughout the party.

Overall, the party was a success and my daughter and all the other children that attended had a blast! 

If you want to check out last years Candyland party, you can find it here.

Mason's Magic Party: Part Three

The Food:

His cake is usually amazing!! We have had the same lady make it every year... until this year :( Since she wasn't able to make it this year, I decided to give it a try! Since I had to many other things to make for the party, I decided to order a cake with white icing and piping. I then took candy and cookies I had made and decorated the cake with those. It turned out pretty cute!

I tried to make the food for the party magic themed also.  

For the main entrees we had Disappearing Dogs (Hot dogs), Abracadabra PB and Alakazam PB&J (Peanut butter and peanut butter & jelly sandwiches cut in the shape of a bunny head with a cookie cutter), Hocus Pocus Nachos, and Shazam Chili. 

I also made food tags for each item. Here are a few:

I had a small veggie tray (rabbit food) and Magic Snack Mix. I made this mix by combining pretzels, cheerios, baby goldfish, peanuts, and m&ms. You could throw in or omit anything you want.

I also wanted to do chocolate cupcake since the cake was white. I made Rabbit in the Hat Cupcakes. I will be posting a tutorial on how to make these soon.

The other desserts I had were Magic wands (braided pretzels dipped in chocolate), Top hat cookies (fudge stripe cookies with a chocolate covered marshmallow on top and a twizzler pull and peel around the bottom), and Magic Rings (mini donuts made with my mini donut maker). Store bought donuts could also be used but I wanted an excuse to pull out my maker ;). 

We also had magic potion to drink (lemonade).

We had almost 80 people RSVP to say they were coming to the party, but ended up only having about 1/3 of them show up. Needless to say we had A LOT of leftovers. My poor family was sick of nachos and hotdogs after about day 3. I didn’t want the leftovers to go to waste, so I decided to change things up a bit. I boiled some noodles and put them in a large Pyrex dish. I mixed the cheese and the chili with the noodles. I cut up some of the weenies and mixed those in as well. I prepared 2 boxes of cornbread and poured that over the top then baked it until golden brown. My family really like it and was happy to not have the same thing they had been eating for days! 

How about I end with one more picture of my cuties!!

Thanks for reading!! I will have one more part with my first tutorial on how to make the rabbit in the hat cupcakes!