I had totally planned on giving the girls their own parties this year. I figured I had gotten away with doing them together for the past two years and both girls had told me they were ready to have their own. In fact, Kaylee and I were just about to push "buy" on some supplies for her "Dolly and Me" party, when she looked over at me and said, "Actually... I changed my mind, I want to do a party with Jadyn instead!" Jadyn had already picked a mermaid theme for hers, so I told Kaylee as long as she was okay with that and Jadyn agreed, they could do it together. Two minutes later it was final, and it was time to start planning!
It all started with mermaid tail invitations which were wrapped in wax paper, tied with twine, and hand delivered by two adorable little mermaids.
To make them, I just found a tail silhouette on google, then loaded them to picmonkey to add the text. The girls' favorite part was adding the glitter! (Which may or may not have trailed itself around the house for a couple weeks. But hey, what's a house of three girls without a little sparkle? :-))
The cupcake table was kinda my favorite. Beach themed cupcakes with chocolate seashells (my SIL Angel helped me make them using Wilton candy molds and a little "pearl dust" to give them extra shimmer), a little brown sugar for the sand, and a mermaid tail for the top!
It was hot outside so I saved the table for last and ended up running short on time in the last few minutes. Luckily Angel arrived as I was frantically trying to get the cupcakes on the stand and came to my rescue... we literally added the last one as the first guest walked through the door! As I was walking some of the moms out, I realized I had left everything else just sitting on the table and forgot to style it. When I walked back outside, I saw that Kaylee had taken charge and set everything up in her own way. She did such a great job that I didn't even touch it. That little girl is going to surpass her mama's party skills in no time! :-)
For favors, we made Mermaid Wands with real starfish (took them off a starfish garland I found at Michaels, painted 1/4" dowel rods and hot glued them with ribbon) and Mermaid Bubble Bath. They were a hit and surprisingly inexpensive!
Two of my favorite elements on the lunch table were the burlap table runners and cute seahorses that I found at Michael's on clearance. I used metal buckets left over from Tyler's party and wrapped them in tulle to hold the centerpieces up. The girls were in charge of filling the little glass vases with sand, adding the purple flowers, and spreading the beach marbles and seashells across the tables. They loved helping and it was so cute watching them! For lunch, we had sandwich roll-ups, sea cucumbers and crab legs (carrot sticks), starfish muffins, goldfish crackers, and sea pearls (purple grapes). I reused my glass bottles from last year and still love them just as much!
I planned lots of activities to keep the kiddos busy. The water bucket race and seaweed limbo were the only activities that we did as a group, the rest were set up as stations for the kids to do as they pleased. I definitely expected there to be a favorite, but the kids seemed to have fun with all of it! That's a good sign, right?
We definitely squeezed a lot of fun into two hours... and my two beautiful girls had such a wonderful time with their friends. I, of course, loved every last chaotic minute of it! The sweet smiles on my girls' faces just made every minute of planning totally worth it. And we're already dreaming up next year! (Stay tuned. :-))
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