Our sweet, fierce, fun little boy turned a year old a couple weeks back and to celebrate we threw him an Under the Sea First Birthday Party. I love planning events. Any kind of celebration. I do feel that birthdays deserve extra attention when it comes to details. Even for the one year olds who will only remember because of the photos.
The littlest details are often the ones that are the most memorable. For Elan’s big day, I scoured Pinterest for some great and unique ideas for his birthday party. With an abundance of ideas we found plenty of things to make his party special.
We happened to be up in Canada for Elan’s big day. So, we were fortunate to have extra hands for helping and lots of family around to celebrate with us. My parents generously offered up their home for the party so we were able to take advantage of their high ceilings and really go for the gusto.
Being a graphic designer by day, has its perks. With a few stock photos, I put together an under the sea style birthday invitation and then continued the same style onto the place cards for the food. The crabwiches were such a huge hit! Everyone commented on them. We ended up cutting each sandwich into fours, so it was more of a bite and not a full meal. All the snack foods, pretzels, cheesies, goldfish crackers, and chips were served in big beach pails, that I found at K-Mart.
My mom insisted everyone come check out the food before we dug in. I have to hand it to her. She was essential in getting everything organized and ready for the party. Helped with the egg salad, the devilled eggs, made the pasta salad, which was delicious, watch for that recipe soon. She also helped with the jellyfish decorations, which were such a hit, my niece is keeping them for her own 8th birthday. She chose a mermaid theme. So cute! Here’s a list of the fun renamed foods as well as what they actually were.
Under the Sea Food Ideas
- shipwreck – assorted pizzas
- crabwiches – sandwiches (we used this Egg Salad Recipe)
- sea shells – pasta salad
- sea snails – pigs in a blanket
- sailboats – devilled eggs
- seaweed dip – Hot Cheesy Spinach Dip
- sea cucumbers – cucumbers
- crab legs – carrots
- fish & chips – goldfish and plain chips
- shark fins – purple tortilla chips
- chum – salsa
- driftwood – pretzels
- coral – hard cheesies
- bait – gummie worms
For both my boys, I’ve made their smash cakes. Ben our oldest, had a car themed party and I played it simple and just plunked a toy car right on the top. For Elan we stuck with the underwater theme. I had planned to try something like this (just the shark silhouettes), but unfortunately I’m not a seasoned cake decorator and frankly, it did not work out for me. So, around midnight the night before the party, I scraped that idea and started looking for cute cake toppers and came across this idea here. It turned out so cute and he demolished it, of course!
Along with his cake, we served cupcakes. I used the same three blue icing colours for Elan’s birthday cake for the frosting. So there was a bit of an ombre effect, not as much as I would’ve liked, but really, no one complained and I was the only one who knew it wasn’t exactly as I had planned. Each cupcake was topped with either a gummy shark or a two bite brownie that was flattened and cut into the shape of a shark fin.
Decorations
We decorated my parents home with seaweed streamers on the walls, my husband handled this and even pointed the ends of the streamers for a more realistic look. We used two different green streamers and just twisted them from the bottom of the wall up, cutting them at different lengths so it really looked effective
My dad blew up white balloons to use for bubbles and my husband taped them just above the seaweed, so it looked like there could’ve been some fish hiding in there. If we’d had more time, we probably could cut out some fish shapes and hit them amoungst the streamers. That could’ve been cute too.
A couple days before the party, my mom, husband and myself worked on the jellyfish. I cut the bottom half off the paper lanterns I had found on Amazon. I cut strips of plastic tablecloths in coordinating colours and then my mom and husband took each strip and gently pulled them on each side of the strip, to create an almost finger print like design, that looks like tentacles. Using these, we hot glued a couple strips all around the bottom of the cut part of the lantern and then glued a bunch to the inside of the paper lantern. We also added a few strings of ribbon to each jellyfish.
My favourite part of all the decorations was probably our over head aquarium. I drew a few sea creatures on a big sheet of black card stock I got at the Dollar Tree, a shark, turtle, starfish and a few smaller fish. We taped these to a blue plastic tablecloth and then hung it from the ceiling in a hallway with a light, we draped it loosely enough that it was a good 8″ from the bottom of the light. We used push pins into the actual ceiling and a bit of tape to secure it. When the light was on, it looked you were walking under an aquarium. It was a hit.
For loot bags, we added a bag of gold fish crackers, some bubbles, little fishing rod toys a couple tropical fish suckers that we found here. And then each child got to choose their own beach pail and shovel kits.
All in all, it was a very successful first birthday party. The decorations and food really tied everything together and everyone enjoyed themselves. I know Elan won’t remember much, if anything, from that day. But he’ll have pictures of himself smearing cake into his little friends hair. The look of pure delight after smashing his cake to nothing. The small details that made the party a real success. And of course, all the friends and family who came together to celebrate him.
Links and tutorials
Here’s a list of links to the ideas and tutorials that we used to make Elan’s party a fun Under the Sea Event.
- jellyfish tutorial – https://www.teediddlydee.com/paper-lantern-jellyfish/ (I didn’t glue the spines, I just formed the paper lantern as it’s suppose to be and let them sit for a day. Then I removed the metal piece, cut off the bottom half and then continued on with the tutorial.
- seaweed and balloon bubbles- https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e8/4c/d7/e84cd7500d6cb50baee1361f03d6a30b.jpg
- aquarium – http://charmingclassroom.blogspot.com/2014/09/ocean-classroom-theme.html and https://www.pinterest.com/pin/422986590001230583/?lp=true
- crabwiches and other food ideas – https://theadventuresofatwinmom.wordpress.com/2018/02/12/pirate-and-mermaid-1st-birthday-party/ (I just used googly eyes and glued them right to the toothpicks.)
- Devilled egg sail boats – https://i.pinimg.com/originals/bf/31/cb/bf31cb8d000c9977f4b89fed57007c14.jpg
Enjoyed Elan’s Under the Sea First Birthday Party? Check out these other fun ideas, I’m sure they’ll be a hit:
If you get a chance to use any of these ideas and want to share, please feel free to tag @candyjarchronicles or use #candyjarchronicles on Instagram, so I can see your photo. I’d love to see what you’re crafting in your home!
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