A Whale of a Time

To celebrate Big Buddy's and Mini Man's respective birthdays we hosted a little a party last weekend. Since the boys birthdays are just a couple weeks apart we've always combined their celebrations. This summer the boys have been really interested in oceans so we went with a sea theme. I didn't want to spend a whole lot on decorations so we did what we could with balloons and streamers.  I also included the boys in the prep a little bit and had them help me make paper chains and paper plate fish.

We had a couple activities set up for the guest to enjoy.  Since most of the eighteen children in attendance were preschoolers or toddlers we kept the activities pretty unstructured and set them up in stations so that children were free to enjoy them at their leisure. 

a sandy sea shell search 

water beads and sea animals 

an easy & mess free aquarium craft 

The activities seemed to be a hit but the most popular area was definitely the playroom.

They only time we attempted to gather all the children in one place was for the piñata. Which we had a lot of fun making the week before - we followed these instructions. 

The food also had a bit of "sea" flair: fish nuggets, a shark shaped watermelon fruit bowl, and an octopus pepper floating in hummus. 

Dessert was a choice of shark fin cupcakes or jello beach cups with fish and shark gummies swimming inside. 

I really enjoy planning and prepping for parties - especially birthday parties. Hands down the best part though is the guests. It always seems like plans go wrong somewhere and the prep never gets quite finished, but when you are with great people, you have a great time.  Even if it rains....

or the host fills the house with burnt plastic smelling smoke. 

My mother-in-law had made the cupcakes and I stuck the extra's in the oven to keep them out of the way in our tiny kitchen. Then when guest started to arrive I turned the oven on to cook the fish nuggets.  A short while later our home was filled with smoke and a very unpleasant smell.  All our guest were extremely gracious, the party continued, and now we have a funny story.