31 Days: Day 15 - Fish Party

Party Time! All those hours of planning and prep all boiled down to 2 hours of fun for the kiddos. Without further ado, I present: Kaitlyn's 8th Birthday FISH PARTY!

Invitations: details can be found in previous blog post here

Food:
A fish cake, of course!
Quick how to on this one because I know you are all thinking this is harder than it really is. I used 2 boxed confetti cake mixes (I could do home made but I think the boxes are faster and taste just as good. Same applies to canned frosting) and cooked them in the round pans. I did this a few days ahead of time then wrapped them and stored them in the freezer. Having them frozen (not totally - let them sit 10 min or so before working with them) makes it easier to cut the cakes to shape, or at least I think it does. Plus it cuts down on prep time right before the party.
So, on the morning of the party (one of those days when I'm glad I naturally wake up at 5AM so I could do this in a quiet house without little ones trying to help) I stacked 2 of the round cakes for the body, then used the other set of 2 round cakes to form the tale and extend the fish's nose a bit.

I tinted 2 cans of frosting with a fun blue color and spread it all over the cake. Then I used the back of the spoon to make the "scales" while the frosting was still sticky. I tinted a tiny bit of frosting a darker blue, put it in a baggie and cut off the edge, then used it for the details on the eye, the outline of the face, and the tail. See? Easy, easy.

The rest of the food included goldfish chex mix, jello fish aquariums made out of blue jello with swedish fish inserted in the center (sorry people, no up close photos on that one. Silly me saw an inspiration photo and thought I knew how to do it. I let the jello set up partially then inserted the swedish fish and let is set up the rest of the way. The result - soggy fish that look a lot like those sad beta fish you see in their individual cups at Walmart. Turns out that if I had read the notes instead of just looking at the photo I would have seen that they created theirs by cutting a slit in the fully set jello and slid the fish in. Ooops. No big deal - the jello still tasted good and we just tossed the soggy fish), and blue lemonade.

The Decor: lots of blue, fish, and seashells

Here is a close up of the balloon fish. Bad photo I know, but the kids got to them before I could get good photos and had a blast running around and bopping the fish to each other. The poor fish didn't look so good after all of that.
I had three of these fish and 2 paper lantern "octopus" hanging from the ceiling in the screen porch. I'm happy to say I came up with the fish idea all by myself! (nope, no web inspiration at all!) Just free handed some shapes for the fins, tail, and lips and cut them out of cardstock. Then taped them to the balloons (the same ones we filled Kaitlyn's room with the night before her birthday) and added an eye using a marker.

The Favors: felt fish-shaped bags filled with home made moon sand, pencils, shark fruit snacks, and a fish hair bow. More details on them can be found in previous blog post here
The Activities:
I always like to start the party with something low key to give the kids something to do while waiting for all of the guests to arrive. Usually I just print out some coloring pages that go along with the party theme, or puzzles or something. This year Kaitlyn took the initiative and came home from library day at school with a book about sea horses and told me she was going to read it to her friends while they waited for everyone to arrive.

-the limbo (Kaitlyn's request. No photos of that because I was holding the limbo stick)
- seashell race. I put a bucket of water on one side of the yard and smaller buckets on the other side of the yard and the kids had to run back and forth, carrying small amounts of water in their seashells until their own bucket was full.

Pin the fin on the fish And sand art. I got these great little sticky paper kits at Michael's (3 for $1). You just peel off one section of the paper to expose the sticky part and pour colored sand on it. Shake off the excess and repeat for every section of the picture. The kids loved this one and each one did at least 4 pictures.

Then of course we finished off the party with the cake and food, and opening the gifts.

I was told by one of the small guests "this is the best party ever." Awww. Thanks! :)
Oh and side note - while I didn't really track expenses on this as things were picked up here and there and I used a lot of stuff I already had, I'm betting I pulled the whole thing together for under $50 including food.

Linking to:

Made By You Monday at Skip to My Lou