My smallest just had her first birthday just a few days ago and over the last few weeks I’ve been prepping for her under the sea themed party.  For me party planning is incredibly enjoyable, I love all of the details that can make a party special.  I love the little touches and trying something new.  Since having baby #1 I have realized that a lot of things don’t happen the same way they did with #1, and it’s usually just logistics, the baby book for example, I filled it out for her first month of life.  Now, I have 11 months to catch up on.  I don’t know the date when her first tooth came in; or for that matter the other four.  It’s things like this that have slipped by.  Her first birthday party was not going to be one of those “things” that didn’t get the attention it deserved.

Her nursery theme was maps, globes and whales, so it only seemed fitting to use whales as a major part of the theme for her party.  The first thing I started to pour over was these incredibly cute little felt hats I have been seeing all over pinterest, most of them are from Etsy and are about $18-$35, of course they are super cute, but for that amount of money you could get a ton of felt.  I think putting mine together with felt and ribbon cost about $1.50.  It did take some time to put it together, but the finished party hat was so worth it.  Normally, she cannot stand to wear hats or hoods, but she wore this hat, so cute.

The other fun little detail I saw, and fell in love with, were these amazing little felt animals, they were so incredibly cute, so I thought it would be fun to try to make little animals and then use them later as some sort of mobile in her room.  Again the entire project was probably under $4, it just took a lot of time to cut and then sew, I am still learning how to sew and made quite a few mistakes.   I attempted little black button eyes, but they were creepy, so I took them off.  In the end I love how these turned out.  I used them to decorate the cupcake display during the party…so cute!   

There are so many inexpensive and cute ways to have a really fun, under the sea, mermaid or beach themed party.  Dollar store buckets were my bowls for the salads and chips.  They were also favors for the kids that came to the party.  It was also rather funny to watch people try to scoop out the food with the shovels, they made it work though.  The favors were different depending on the age of the petite, for the older kids it was bubbles, goldfish crackers and bathtub ocean animal water squirters.  For the babies, it was yogurt melts , bubbles and water squirters.

The food got lots of rave reviews, from the seashell caprese pasta salad, to the turtle shaped bread bowl of spinach dip but one of the crowd favorites was the crab croissant sandwiches.  I seriously have no idea how people threw themed parties before pinterest existed, so many amazing ideas that make it all so much fun.

Enjoy!

E