“The sea, once it casts it’s spell, holds one in it’s net of wonder forever”
Jacques Cousteau

There is something extremely magical about creating a child’s birthday party; the planning, the creativity, the thought process and the fun. When my daughter came to me with the grand idea of bringing a magical mermaid party to life I was on board and immediately let me creativity kick in. Before I start planning, I always like to pick a color palette and I thought soft pastels would be the perfect hue to accent an underwater themed celebration. While I love hosting events at my house, it’s not always conducive to a large group of children so we opted for a quaint, historical restaurant located in the heart of our downtown, which also happens to be our families restaurant. I set up one large table that would be used for eating, another medium table for the arts and crafts and then a small table for the face-painting station. Since I was set on using a balloon garland as my statement piece, I decided to keep the other decorations simple and natural. The cake itself made a wonderful centerpiece and I added seashells, succulents and confetti to the tables. Each girl received a starfish wand that my daughter and I assembled together. This would also make a wonderful craft for the party but instead we painted sand dollars.

In addition to the wands, guests took home a shell goody-bag filled with shell necklaces, bath bombs, nautical tattoos and hair ties. We set up an easy DIY photo station by hanging a white sheet and adding fish net and garland. To save time on the cake I ordered a simple, two-layered round cake with pink drip icing from a local bakery. I’ll be honest, this was the only glitch in this magical party. When I picked the cake up it wasn’t the shade of pink I requested, the mermaid tail was stuck in the middle and they added white flowers, which I did not request. I quickly ran to the craft store, purchased some shell molds, shell and nautical stickers and then picked up macaroons at the grocery store. I made a couple batches of chocolates using white chocolate and food coloring. These were so easy to make and they added a nice element of depth to the cake! I then added the macaroons, the stickers (I attached them to toothpicks) and a sprinkle of edible gold flakes. I was actually happy with how the cake turned out and used the leftover chocolates to decorate a batch of cupcakes.

To recreate this magical birthday party follow the links below.

Magical Mermaid Birthday Supplies:
Balloon Garland by paperboy / Cake Topper / Plates & Napkins by Meri Meri / Mermaid Necklace by Meri Meri / Shell Garland by Meri Meri / Natural Fish Net / Starfish / Sand Dollars / Chocolate Molds