Hello again./Fishy party

A while back, I decided to take a break from the blog. At the time, I thought it would be permanent. What can I say, here I am again.

Thanks to those of you who have hung around. Hopefully you can look forward to finding some more useful posts from me on a pretty regular basis.



On that note, here are some pics and details from my daughters second birthday party. I chose a fishy/ocean theme, and made many of the decorations.

The fabric drapes were fabric I had just lying around, believe it or not. If I had had to go buy some fabric, I probably would have went with some blue tulle.


I hung paper sea creatures (traced from coloring books, clip art, etc, because I can't draw,) from crepe paper streamers.
I hot glued seashells onto white twinkle lights, and hung them around the dining room.
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I crocheted lots of little octopus finger puppets, to decorate the tables, and for the kids to play with. The free pattern is located here:

http://suzies-yarnie-stuff.blogspot.com/2009/08/suzies-octopus-finger-puppet.html

I also scattered around ocean themed sand molds and squirt toys, purchased at Dollar Tree.

Elsewhere in the house, I blew up dozens of blue balloons, and let the kids throw them, and kick them around. I found some large inflatable fish (pool toys,) at Big Lots, and threw them among the balloons. The kids played a magnetic fishing game I picked up at Dollar Tree, and colored in a giant sea themed coloring book.

The cupcakes were decorated with Nemo gummies, crushed graham crackers, and fruit roll up seaweed. My inspirations were an old issue of Family Fun magazine, and this post, from one of my favorite blogs:

http://pinkandgreenmama.blogspot.com/2010/03/birthday-party-highlights-fishy.html



I served gummi sharks, Swedish fish, and Wilton's candy melts, molded into seashells, as well as fishbowls full of goldfish crackers.

I unfortunately forgot to take a picture of the felt goody bags I made, with seahorse appliques. They were filled with squirt toys, bubbles, fishy stickers, and colorful melt and pour soap, in the shape of seashells.


The party was a success, in spite of the fact that there were more than thirty people in our 1000 square foot house. Eek. My husband and I both have large families.
I spent several months working on the decorations here and there, so it was fairly time consuming, but it wasn't terribly expensive, since I shopped my own craft stash as much as possible, and filled in the blanks with mostly dollar store items.