Charlotte’s Rainbow Mermaid Party

I still can not believe my princess is five…and in kindergarten! She is such an inspiration to me in so many ways. She is creative, sassy, silly, smart, thoughtful, and a huge animal lover. She loves color and fashion, Barbies and mermaids, flowers and fairies. I wasn’t ever much of a girly girl, but my princess sure is! When she told me she wanted a rainbow mermaid party for her birthday, I thought it was a great idea. Since her birthday is in August, we almost always have pool parties…so the mermaid theme fit perfectly! I let her help with every aspect of the design and we both had a wonderful time planning her party…and celebrating the BIG FIVE!

We started with my mermaid invitation and RSVP card. It was a blast watching her get the RSVPs back in the mail! She loves getting mail, so getting mail to tell which friends were coming to the party really built up the excitement!

 

I hope you are ready for a lot of photos, because my friend Courtney Vickers {Courtney Vickers Photography} shot the party and she did such an amazing job, I couldn’t narrow them down!

DECOR

For decorations, Charlotte wanted her favorite rainbow colors throughout the party…so to balance it, and keep a girly magical feeling we added in a lot of white, from the white ruffled tablecloth {made from curtains} to the white pop up tent we put everything under, to the white “sit – upons” for the kids tables! I also used hints of burlap to ground everything and bring out the feeling of sand!

My favorite decor elements were the DIY ones, many of which were dreamed up with Elissa from One Stone Events! She was fabulous to bounce ideas around with and came up with some brilliant DIYs (like the mermaid tail and the sit upons at the kids table). I spray painted over a hundred scallop shells in rainbow colors, along with starfish and conch shells.

The mermaid tail coming out of the dessert table was made by cutting out a tail shape from mat board and hot gluing my painted shells on in a scale pattern. I then glued some ruffle fabric to the fins to tie it into the table! The spray painted shells also made a table runner on the kids table, and to decorate spray painted dollar store frames! While planning this party I made my first trip to Hobby Lobby and found all of these colored bottles on sale for 50% off…so they all came home with me! We also painted mason jars and filled them with glitter to hold the party blowers on the kids table. {My daughter informed me that every party had to have party blowers}

For the grand entrance into the tent, I had tassels from The Flair Exchange which everyone loved!

 ACTIVITIES

The activity part was pretty easy…we had a pool party!! So most of the time the kids were swimming, and after they were done, we had a piñata {another party must have according the the guest of honor}. Some of these kids had almost perfected their swing, so i was very glad we had somewhere to hang it this time so my hubby didn’t have to hold it again! After the piñata, we moved on to the food…

FOOD

One of my favorite parts!! I tried to keep it simple, and yet we still ended up with more than enough! I let Charlotte look at my Pinterest board of cake ideas and she choose one that I thought I could actually do myself!! I was surprised, as I thought she would want the one with barbie or something very elaborate. The cake she liked was actually linked to a tutorial on Sweetopia about frosting in a watercolor type design…so I used her colors and made a four layer cake, then used Sweetopia’s tutorial for icing the cake! To make it perfectly rainbow mermaid, I had Charynn from Two Sugar Babies make a mermaid tail to stick up front the middle. She even added rainbow scales! We have a slight obsession with cookies in this family, so I had to go to my two favorite ladies for some special treats!! I sent the invite to Christine of Better Bit of Butter so she could design some of her fabulous BBB minis and I emailed Renee from Bees Knees Creative to create cookie wands with starfish and sand dollars! {you may remember the Starfish wands from Kate Landers Mermaid party…yes…I couldn’t resist them!} We bought rainbow pearl gum balls {my daughters biggest request} and I also made the Pearl Candies from Courtney Dial Whitmore’s newest book – Candy Making for Kids! They were so fantastic and SO EASY to make! Finally, I used my favorite Blumeboxes with the cake pop holders to hold our lollipops!

Since the party was middle of the afternoon, we didn’t have a “meal” but we did pick up some catering from our friends at Chick Fil A {chicken salad and chicken nuggets} so that we would have some real food along with chips and crackers.

FAVORS

For favors, we had the goodie bags from the piñata, the cookie wands from Bees Knees Creative, and we also bought special “ocean necklaces” from a beach shop for all of the kids! The girls had white and pink shell necklaces, while the boys had sharks tooth necklaces.

The day was absolutely amazing…just like my sweet little mermaid princess!

*****

VENDOR CREDITS:

– Photography: Courtney Vickers Photography

– Stationery, Illustration, and Printables: Paper & Pigtails | Kori Clark

– Fondant Cake Toppers: Two Sugar Babies

– Tassle Garland: The Flair Exchange

– Mini Square Cookies: Better Bit of Butter

– Cookie Wands – Bees Knees Creative

– Birthday Headband – Baby Birdie Boutique