The (belated) wrap up

It's taken me a while to get to this, but still - better late than never!

Post-party wrap up coming up.
I'll stick to the facts - there's a lot to cover.
If I forget anything - feel free to ask in the comments.

THE BEGINNING - FUN AND GAMES

When the kids arrived we had the table set up for craft.

They all coloured in and decorated a fish cut out, they came from Riot art and craft which are in lots of suburban shopping centres.

On the tables there were foam stick on shapes, pencils, textas, glue sticks galore, sparkly paper, kinder squares and bowls of sequins and bead - all from Officeworks.

I'm not into competitive games for under fives as it always ends in tears and I am a bit old-fashioned about making everyone a winner - really, how does that prepare you for life!

The kids warmed-up with some under the sea musical statues - they had to dance like snapping sharks, octopuses, fish and crabs.

Next up - parachute games!

We got a parachute off eBay ($26 delivered to our door - seriously).

I left the guy who lives here in charge of the parachute games and he really delivered, they had a ball. There are a bunch of games on the web - just use Mr Google.

We also had a treasure hunt - two groups with five clues each - the last clue was to find the guy who lives here.
Once both teams found him he opened a treasure box and shared out gold coin treasure to them all.

We also did old-style balloon-between-the-knees relays and egg and spoon races (I hard boiled the eggs).


THE MIDDLE - FEEDING THE STARVING HORDES

With this many kids to feed I truly recommend sitting them all down.
We hired tables and chairs from Party Squad - they are great to deal with and it's worth the money - I think it is anyway!

We served the following:

• Treasure swords - fruit on skewers
• Octodogs - Sorry I didn't get a pic of these, they went so quickly - hot dogs shaped like octopi - see them here.
• Mermaid Cakes - cupcakes with mermaid/fish/crab toppers (shown below in some playdough).
• Sausage boats - Sausage rolls with a sail made of a triangle of paper glued to a toothpick
• King Neptune Pies - party pies
• Starfish sparkles - fairy bread cut like starfish
• Octopus smiles - jelly in oranges - see here for how to make them - also a biiiig hit!
• Sugar periwinkles - My mother-in-law made meringues shaped like periwinkle shells!
• Ariel's cheesy bacon tarts - made by my mum - delicious.
  
  

  

  Make these using scrap booking paper cutters, toothpicks and a glue gun.

  

THE END - CAKES AND FAREWELLS

Two mermaid birthday cakes of course!

The cakes were standard round butter cakes with the centre filled with a jelly sea, surrounded by a wall of Clinker lollies to stop it slipping off the cake.

The mermaids were a gift to the girls and came from The Friendship Tree.
They sat on a 'rock' made of icing so they didn't get ruined in the jelly.

Then we took a photo of each of the kids either being a hula girl or a surfer kid (their choice) in these funny cardboard cut outs from Lombards, which is also where we got the hanging fish, paper plates and cups, streamers and lei's from.

  

Phew !! I'm exhausted!

And here are the wonderful Grandparents who helped out in so many ways on the day and in the lead up - my heartfelt thanks to them.