party recap:

Just me & 10 girls under the sea.  I did some craftiness, some things worked better than others. What didn’t work/what I learned:

To do that “use plastic table cloths in place of streamers” thing I showed in my last pinterest post is VERY cool… only if you have the right size of space. Mine? Didn’t work. Wrong size room, too high ceilings in one, too narrow for 1/2 a table cloth but too long for a full… So! Streamers it was.

The blue jello with fish candy in it was a big hit. I did it in tiny plastic cups (disposable “appetizer” cups from party store). ONE PROBLEM: Don’t put candy fish in the jello when you make the jello, or even any significant amount of time before you serve. Jello needs to be set (or fish just sink to bottom and look, well, dead). Also? Too long in the jell0 and the fish.. well… they start to dissolve into it. and the texture + color is GROSS!!! Like decaying fish. SO… yeah. A lot of girls didn’t actually eat them and I ended up throwing out left overs. *gag*

Things that did work:

Using the Duff spray (Duff as in guy from Ace of Cakes on Food Network – he has his own line at Michael’s of decorating supplies) on cupcakes = awesome. It basically is food coloring spray paint – and i LOVE the look.

I set out stickers and crafty bits down the center of the table – as you might confetti and such. Then I set a chipboard heart at each spot (which I’d painted blue + misted with sparkly silver mist). It also had 2 holes punched in it and a wire tie thing (what do you call those? pipe cleaners? they’re in kid craft area…) so that when finished the girls could put them up on their walls. Above you see E using a Copic. I never use mine and I have blue + green ones so I let them have at ’em. No Copic was harmed.

Mason Jar as drink = fab. NO SPILLS. I punched a trio of holes to make room for the straw (Fyi: crop a dile big bite WORKS ON MASON JAR LIDS!) I added another hole for the umbrella, and filled with each girl’s choice of drink.

Dessert bar a hit. I cut rice crispy treats (that had blue sprinkles in them) into star shapes (aka sea stars), had a big starfish shaped bowl full of sea-themed candy like life savers, gummy fish, swedish fish, gummy sharks, gummy clown fish; and then I had the cupcakes of course. It was NOT a free-for-all. Things got passed out, choices made, and baggie ‘o candy went home with each girl for later. (they just got to pick A candy. I wasn’t gonna amp them up any more than they were!)

I spent a lot of time on streamers and decorations – not that it took long to take down. I was happy to. I’m sure we’ll have many birthday and other parties in years to come, but kids are only little for a few precious years. There is a very narrow window of time, a very set number of years where they’re old enough to have theme parties like this, but not too old that they don’t want hoopla.

I am doing my best to make each one count, and to have fun with the preparations and detail. Know what? It’s really satisfying and fun – and I’m glad that it turned out as fun as she’d hoped.