The Un-Birthday

We celebrated Charlotte's Un-Birthday this past weekend.  She is finally to the age of friend parties and I was excited to get to host a party at the beach.  When will I ever get the chance again?

Charlotte decided on a Mermaid themed party and there are lots of great ideas out on the web for Mermaid parties.  We used One Charming Party for our ideas and printables.  This made it a little easier to host a great party without access to Target, dollar stores, and Michaels (to name a few).

One Charming Party gives you lots of ideas for you party and easy instructions for any DIY projects.  They even provide a menu.  I didn't get to take any great pictures of the party before hand.  I didn't leave enough time before guests were arriving and for last minute changes.  We had hoped to rent a table and be entirely down on the beach.  However the beach was already prepared for the Typhoon coming on Monday and they wouldn't let us rent a folding table.  Oh, and tinsel glitter is my new favorite thing.  It makes everything look cool.

We made the sign, the sandcastle, we dried our own seaweed (made the house smelly) to glitter, and I saw these suckers on another party and thought they looked like sea glass and we had to make those too.

One thing about having the party at a different location is you forget things.  I had cut out and glittered the mermaid cupcake decorations, but forgot them.  So, only the green ones with white chocolate sand dollars were decorated - Oh, well.

I love the paper straws.  I wanted to make sure everything was essentially safe if it was blown out to sea or down the beach.  So, we packaged their food in small paper bags and then in a bucket.  Lunch was Peanut Butter and Jelly Fish sandwiches, crab legs (carrot sticks), sea cucumbers (sliced cucumbers), deep sea pearls (blueberries), gold fish crackers, and sea weed juice (purple crush).  Of course they didn't eat much.

After lunch we played games.  Dolphin, Dolphin, Shark! (Duck, Duck, Goose).  Water Relay, we used large shells to run water from one bucket to another - girls vs. Grahm (Grahm graciously lost - with a little bit of my help).  Sea Shell Dig.  We collected shells from various beaches to provide the girls with great shells to find and not broken fragments.  Flip-Flop Hunt.  There is a cute message that you read to the girls and then they are given one flip-flop and they have to find the match.  And some Limbo.  Jayce was our DJ (he is growing up too fast).

We all ended up a little too burnt, tired, and happy after a day at the beach!

Happy Un-Birthday Charlotte!  I hope you had a wonderful day and know how special and amazing you are.  You are so sweet and tender hearted and always have a smile.  We love you so much.