An oceana party!!

Back at the beginning of March Bethany turned 4 and for months beforehand she had told me she wanted an oceana party. What the uninitiated may not know is that oceana is where Merliah is a mermaid princess in the Barbie movie 'A Mermaid Tale', Bethy's favourite movie, so what she wanted was mermaids. Since quite a lot of her friends are boys I added pirates to the mix as well and made it an 'under the sea' theme. This was the first party I have thrown one of my kids since I discovered the wonder that is pinterest and to be honest I was quite overwhelmed by all the amazing ideas I found on there. So overwhelmed in fact that at some points my perfectionistic streak almost drove me crazy trying to unfold the amazing vision for the party I had in my head. Something this control freak has no control over however is the weather and for the 4th year in a row it rained for Bethany's birthday party. This meant my fabulous plans for our huge backyard were all squashed into a tiny loungeroom and a back verandah and it was pretty much chaos, but the kids still had plenty of fun which is the point of a birthday party afterall.

 

Decorations

I was busy for weeks beforehand with all sorts of craft supplies making jellyfish from plastic bowls, fish from paper lanterns and paper plates, cutting sea creatures out of cardboard, and turning boxes into a pirate ship.

 

 

 

 Since we were stuck inside I got some fish covered plastic from the local cheap shop to protect the carpet!!

 

I found these inflatable mermaids on ebay and the kids loved them, my girls carried these around for days after the party.

 

Food

I found some great ideas on pinterest like a watermelon pirate ship and a capsicum octopus dip. My octopus looked rather sad but hey I tried and my hubby did the pirate ship cause I was too stressed setting up everything else by then. I made mermaid and sea creature cookies the day before which turned out well and the pirate ship jelly cups turned out great too. The cake was my major task, it looked so simple in the pictures I had as inspiration but it took me hours!!! I made the white chocolate moulds a couple of days beforehand and that was a lot trickier than I realised cause white chocolate is a lot more sensitive than milk chocolate and it kept clumping, it took 3 attempts to get it right. I have to say though that Bethany was very impressed with the final product and I was very proud of how it looked. The sand (biscuiut crumbs) obviously looked authentic too cause my nephew thought I really put sand on the cake.

 

Games

Doing the games I had planned was a bit tricky with the number of kids in a much smaller space than I had anticipated. We did pin the tail on the mermaid which worked fine, the next game was musical islands where I had pictures of treasure islands for the kids to stand on (like musical chairs) but because it was so squishy they all stayed right next to the papers and you practically had to steal one from a child to make it smaller and get anyone out so I ended up just giving out prizes when there were still a few kids left. I also had a colouring in table set up and a tattoo station and there was the pirate ship and inflatble things to play with, the pirate ship especially was a huge hit!!

 

The rest of the games were meant to be all part of a treausure hunt and you got a piece of the treasure at each stop which would have worked fine having it all set up in our very large yard but given the space we had we ended up having to do 1 activity then set up the next 1 so it didn't flow how I had planned and was very chaotic. It started with fishing using magnets to pick up plastic sea creatures that had paper clips attached to them, the kids kept what they caught. Then at each activity you picked up another prize, bubbles for tossing rings on the octopus, stickers for walking the plank etc and it ended up at the grumpy pirate (my husband) who was guarding the treasure.

 

(sorry I can't figure out how to rotate the photo)

This was a practice run at the fishing the week before the party. On the actual day there were so many kids crowded around it you can't see the container at all.

We did an octopus toss that you can just see at the bottom of this picture, then they walked the plank.

Limbo.

Treasure chest pinata.

I borrowed this treasure chest off my mum who has had it for years and put the bags of treasure inside. The girls bags had plastic jewellery in them and the boys had plastic coins and a little bendable pirate.

 

The scary pirate who had the treasure.

 

Extra Goodies

The original plan was that all the treasure bits and pieces and the pinata lollies would actually be the lolly bags as I gave them all little bags to put all their treasures in, but I couldn't help myself and did goodie bags as well and also made some mermaid and sea creature chocolate pops to take home. I found some really gorgeous things like pirate shaped chocolates, wooden mermaid bracelets, wooden pirate stamps, pencils with bobbly sea creatures on them but the pictures I had of those things seem to have vanished from my phone, most probably with the help of little fingers who like to touch my stuff!!

The bags in the process of being filled.

 

Happy snaps 

The birthday mermaid princess.

Pirate Elora and cousin Josh.

Pirate daddy.

Very excited birthday girl at cake time!!

Very blessed young lady, all the presents didn't even fit in the photo properly!!

 

It was certainly one of the most involved and time consuming parties I have ever done but I actually really enjoyed putting in all the special touches and details and Bethany absolutey loved it which made it all worthwhile.