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Under Sea Sleepover -7yr- Sand in Bottle Invites

December 2012

Rachel in Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Special Mention

Under The Sea Sleepover - This is an Under The Sea themed sleepover I planned for my seven year old daughter. There were 20 guests, but only 8 slept over. Overall, this party was one of the greatest I planned. 

INVITATIONS: For the invitations, I purchased a couple of mini glass bottles and filled them with some sand. I also dropped in a few tiny seashells and some dried seaweed. I printed out the party details on some old-looking yellowed paper. I rolled up the invitation and slipped it into the bottle. My daughter passed out the invitations at school because they were too fragile to mail out.

DECORATIONS: The party mainly took place in our dining room, living room and backyard, so I focused on decorating those three places. In our dining room, I set up one table for eating and another as a buffet. For the dining table, I made my own blue tie-dye tablecloth and set it on the table. I sprinkled around some sea animal confetti that I bought off Etsy and set up the cutlery. For the cutlery I bought some thin blue polka-dot ribbon and used a scissor to curl it and tied it around some plastic forks. I also got some origami ideas off the internet and I folded the napkins into a fish shape. For the plates, I bought red plates from a party supplies store. I printed out a crab leg template from the internet and used it to cut out crab legs on red card stock. I used glue to stick the legs onto the plates and drew two black eyes with a non-toxic marker.  For the living room, I bought some blue, yellow and green round Chinese lanterns and used tissue paper to make tentacles (like jellyfish!) and hung them around the room. Finally, for our backyard, I shaped starfish out of salt dough and poked a hole in the top of each one, and then I baked them. Once cooled, I threaded them onto some strong cord and hung it up. 

ACTIVITIES: For the activities, I set up some stations where the girls could play games, do crafts, or just have fun. At almost every station, the guests could win sand dollars (which were just some plastic tokens from the dollar store), which they could then exchange for prizes at the prize table. Here are the stations we had: Mermaid Makeovers (I put their hair in a fishtail braid and put on some glittery makeup), Make your own ocean (I filled some bowls with colored sand, seashells and toy sea creatures. The girls made their own ocean in a baby food jar), Pin the Fin on The Shark (This one is self-explanatory), Underwater Fun (I cut out a very large fish shaped piece of cardboard and painted it. I cut a hole near the mouth and some other places on its body and the girls took turns throwing bean bags into the holes. Each hole was worth a different number of points.), Fishy Frames (I cut out photo frames from card stock and they decorated with glitter glue and fun foam sea creatures) and finally, we ordered a mermaid cardboard cut-out and removed the face so the kids could take turns “being a mermaid” while I took some pictures. They got to put their picture in their photo frame. 

FOOD: Since we had quite a few guests, I made a lot of food and set it up on the buffet table in our dining room. The food was divided in four categories: snacks, drinks, salty food and sweet food (dessert). In the snacks category, we had Fishy Mix (Goldfish crackers, oyster crackers, pretzel sticks and Trix Cereal) and Seaweed dip and crackers (spinach dip and dipping toasts). For the drinks, we had Sea Foam smoothies (Blueberry smoothies with a scoop of vanilla ice cream) and juice. For the salty food, we had sushi (we didn’t serve any with raw fish for obvious reasons), Fish sticks, Spaghetti n’ Octodogs (We used green food coloring to make “seaweed”. We sliced hot-dogs’ ends in to 8 separate tentacles and boiled them so they would curl up) and cheesy shells (macaroni and cheese made with shells pasta). In the sweets category, we made octopus cake pops, coral clusters (we covered chow mein noodles in pink and red candy melts, then decorated with sea creature sprinkles), and Ocean jello (blue jello with Swedish Fish candies and shark gummies). 

CAKE: For the cake, since my daughter loves mermaids and Barbie dolls, we made Barbie into a mermaid! We bought Barbie’s upper body at Michael’s (they sell half-Barbies to make princess cakes). We baked the cake and frosted the sides with blue icing. My daughter cut out curvy seaweed shapes from green fruit leather and stuck them on the sides. We also stuck on some fish jujubes and shark gummies. On the top of the cake, we frosted it with yellow buttercream icing. We crushed up graham crackers and mixed in some brown sugar to make sand and carefully put the mixture on the cake’s top. We used chocolate-covered malt balls to make coconuts! I used gray fondant to make a nice little rock/boulder for Barbie the mermaid to sit on, and then used green fondant to make her tail. I used a toothpick to make scale outlines and dusted it with some edible sparkly dust (from Wilton). We carefully placed the boulder on the cake, then the tail on the boulder, and finally stuck Barbie’s torso onto the tail. I also piped a cute pink bikini top onto Barbie to cover her up. I used the same procedure as the tail (toothpick and sparkly dust) to make starfish, coral and more.  Sleepover Time! When it came time for the girls to go to bed, I set up their sleeping bags in the family room and put on the Disney film The Little Mermaid". I also hung up some glow-in-the-dark stars and sea animals from the dollar store. I put on some soothing ocean music to help them sleep. The next morning they woke up and had some smoothies and eggs and watched "A Shark Tale" while waiting for their parents.

FAVORS: I stocked some sea themed goodies in plastic buckets. Favors included some goggles seashells bubbles coral necklaces rubber fish toys balloons candy and the prizes they got from the sand dollars. Overall this was a superb celebration and all my daughter’s friends asked if I could plan their parties! "

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