A Mermaid Party With Only One Mermaid

So we had a mermaid party.  Although as it turns out there was only one beautiful mermaid and it wasn’t even one of our girls, even though she could be their sister.

Instead of being the obvious choice and dressing as mermaids, our girls opted for being Ariel…  When she has legs and comes to find the prince in her pink ball gown.  In a way I’m not surprised, considering that all the princess marketing out there depicts Ariel in this gown – it was kind of inevitable that they would have a bit of a warped view.  And now that I think about it, that’s the reason that they agreed to my theme suggestion – another way to have another princess party (oh my gosh they were so small and chubby!).

Anyway.

I decided (by force) to cut it down this year, I had so many ideas to implement, so much party food to make look like it had just flopped out of the water and onto a plate and so many decorations to make and put up to make you think you took a wrong turn and drove straight into the ocean.

A couple of days before the party, I spent some time cutting out starfish and seaweed to add to the fish and characters that my Mom had spent some time on.  And then on the day we put it all together to make this:

 

 

The most fun part was the cake.  We made it ourselves.  It’s kind of a tradition that we want to keep doing for all the years to come.  Making the cake ourselves, no matter where the party is.  We are by no means master cake makers, but we tried.  And it was fun trying.  I bought the white fondant and the Nemo’s though – cos ain’t nobody got time for that.

We hired a jumping castle from probably the most awesome castle hire place in Cape Town.  Their castles are pretty awesome and the kids loved them.

Normally I don’t bother doing any kind of game for the kids because they were so small and a jumping castle was enough.  But they are getting older now.  And it was a lovely day.  So I decided to make them work for their party packs by getting a bucket and then having to go on a treasure hunt to find all the bits to put in the buckets.  They seemed to have a ball!  At the various stations they picked up a juice, chips, lollipop, small chocolate and a rainbow slinky.

Then it was singing and cake cutting time – the part that the girls most looked forward to.

And then there were random moments in between…  Like the ever present photobomb Dad.

Knox and his gang really stole peoples attention this year – can you blame them?  They are just so adorable!