16503

Beach Party 5-10yr - Jellyfish Pasta

August 2007

Lucy in Canton, MA USA

Special Mention

Three years ago, I had a beach party that was absoultley fantastic! I would suggest it for any child between 5 and 10 years old. My party was 4 hours long and I think it should be no more than 5 hours.

CAKE: My parents worked really hard on the food and I was so happy with the end result. For the cake, she made two round vanilla cakes. Then she put blue food coloring in a can of white, vanilla frosting. Then she frosted the top of one the cakes and put the other one on top to make a layered cake. Next she frosted the entire cake with this blue frosting. This was to look like an ocean. Next she crushed Teddy Grahams into a fine cookie dust. She sprinkled this across the frosting to make it look like a sandy beach. Next, she put four Teddy Grahms face up on the blue frosting to look like they were swimming in the water. Around two of them she put Lifesavers candy to look like floaties. Then she put a few bears on the beach some lying on mini airhead towels. She also pulled apart twizzlers and cut them up in little pieces to form little red seashells. Next she put a little cocktail drink umbrella near the bears on the towels. Then, in the extra space in the water of the cake she used some yellow frosting to make a sun and put skittles to make eyes and a smile. On the outer edge of the cake, she used skittles to spell out my name.

SNACKS: My mom made two regular batches of chocolate chip cookies. Then she frosted them to look like beach balls. First she used a black frosting tube to make an off-centered oval to look like the top of the ball. Then (again with the black frosting) she divided the beach ball into crescent shaped sections. Next she used different colored frosting to fill in the sections. They looked awesome! Using this same technique, she made a beach ball vegetable platter. The oval shaped top of the ball, was a bowl of ranch dressing, then the carrots were the lines dividing the ball into sections. She used cucumbers and tomatoes to fill in the sections. We also had cheesy chips, pretzels, tortilla chips, and salsa that we put in cleaned sand buckets. Next to the buckets of chips we put little shovels with Hershey's kisses in them. All of these snacks were on a table inside that the kids could have anytime.

DINNER: My mom made jellyfish pasta! She made big rolls then cut them in half to make the top of the jellyfish. Then the spaghetti was laid out flat to look like the tentacles. We also had pepper seashells. We cut up tons of slices then laid them out in a sort of fan. They looked awesome! Finally, we made some tropical smoothies! We blended ice, strawberry powder, and some raspberries. There were also little umbrellas and a lemon slice on the sides of the cups. My friends loved dinner!

INVITATIONS: First I folded pieces of white construction paper in half then folded those halves in half. Then I glued a strip of blue and tan paper to the front of the card to make a sky and ground. Next I made a palm tree by cutting and gluing on a brown tall triangle and fake green leaves in the left side of the card. To the right of this palm tree you should write,  NAME is turning 8 then on the inside of the card write, Let's Celebrate!. Below this include all the who, what, where, when, why, what to bring, and RSVP information. Then go back and decorate around the text with beach stickers or glitter.

ACTIVITIES: As my friends arrived, we played some BEACH VOLLEYBALL. This was a good starting game because people could easily join. We just started with passing a big blow up ball back and fourth. My mom bought this at Target. We also bought a volleyball net but she was also considering renting or ebay. After we just passed it back and fourth for a while we made it a little trickier by adding towels over the net so the opposing teams could not see what their opponents were planning on doing. We had to catch then throw the ball. We played this about 30 minutes. After everyone arrived, we got on our bikinis and headed back outside.

My mother set up this BACKYARD BEACH for us! Near the steps, she filled huge plastic containers with sand then put them next to each other. Then to make it look like a beach, she put more sand between the cracks and overflowing off the sides. Putting the sand in containers made for an easier clean up. On top of the sand, she put five little beach chairs to bask in the sun on. There were also towels laid down on the grass around the sand. There was a little more space on the sand where we put some buckets and shovels. One of my favorite things about beaches are the little ice cream and jewelry stands so I thought it would be fun to have that in our backyard beach too. We ended up having a popsicle, twine beaded bracelet, and name art stands.

For the popsicle stand we rented a cheap cart that my mom could roll around and had an umbrella on the top. Inside the cart we put a cooler with ice, freezie pops, Italian ice, Klondike bars, and these really cool frozen lemon treats that had lemon flavored Italian ice actually inside of a hollowed out lemon. For the jewelry stand, we just used a small card table, covered it with a tablecloth, and laid out tons of twine bracelets and necklaces. My aunt is a really good artist so our final stand was name art. She had rectangular sheets of construction paper, plastic covers, and paints. Then each girl came up, told her their name, and she painted it in about three minutes with artistic lettering. These were beautiful! Each girl was given 15 $ of Monopoly money to spend at these stations. Of course, all beaches have water but unfortunately we have no pools or Jacuzzis or anything. The best we could do was sprinklers but it was so much fun! We had one that spun around in circles and one that swished back and fourth.

My mom put on some music and we danced and jumped all over the place. We did this for about an hour and fifteen minutes then my mom turned off the water and we laid in the sun to dry off a bit. Then we inside to change into our clothes. This whole activity took about 1 hour and 45 minutes. So we had 1 hour and 45 minutes left after this. We headed inside for dinner and cake which was explained above. This took about one hour. We all visited the snack table to accompany our jellyfish pasta and seashell peppers!

Everyone's mouths DROPPED when they saw the cake! It was so amazing! After dinner and cake, we did some more activities! We had about 45 minutes left. First we had a BEACH AUCTION! The girls were given 100 dollars of monopoly money to bid on the items. There were 11 girls so we had 15 items to make sure that everyone would get something. The items were: 3 cans of bubbles, a Frisbee and tennis ball, a towel wrap, party poppers and sparklers, a mystery item which was some flip flops, some tropical flavored skittles, a palm tree umbrella, some pajama bottoms with pineapples on it, a container of cookie dough, some sunglasses, a mystery item which was lollipops, Blue Crush DVD, a little bath set, a blow up pool chair, and more candy. My friends loved this! It took about 30 minutes.

With our last 15 minutes, we were given our GOODIE BAGS to decorate. Inside the goodie bags, we had jewelry from backyard beach, name art from backyard beach, auction items, little beach photo frames, a little cute sunscreen bottle, a little package of sugar cookies, a flip flop necklace, and hershey's kisses! My mom set out markers, glue, glitter, string, 3D pens, and decorations to use on these little fabric goodie bags. This was a good ending activity because everyone was calm yet busy as the parents arrived!

This party was FANTASTIC! Good luck with all of yours!!

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