How to Host A Budget Friendly Mermaid Party

My oldest daughter’s birthday is at the end of July which makes it difficult to have school friends over for a party. Which is why I decided to hold her birthday the second to last weekend before school got out so that all her friends could come. We call this her “fake birthday”.

One of the things that I love about summer birthday parties is that we usually throw a pool party. Pool parties are easy to plan and don’t require lots of prep work to come up with creative ways to keep a bunch of kids busy.

However, for this particular party, we’d been having a lot of bad weather so the actual “pool” portion of the party was out. So what’s a pool-loving, mermaid wannabe kind of gal to do for a fun birthday party? Why not throw an under the sea party!

(PS: This is not a Pinterest perfect party – it’s real life party on a budget from a regular mom as you will be able to tell from the photos.)

First I designed the invitation, printed it off onto card stock and used a paper cutter to get a nice straight edge.  I fit four to a page and printed off two sheets to make 8 invites.

The real inspiration for this party came from this book I had bought a few years ago through Scholastic. It has several great mermaid or under the sea type themed crafts.  (affiliate link)

The key to doing any of these crafts is to be prepared and have everything prepped as much as possible. I didn’t want to go overboard because after all it’s just a birthday party for one afternoon and we are on a limited budget so I tried to mostly just use stuff we already had around the house.

For decorations, I cut out fish of different sizes on stiff paper and then cut out tissue paper in different colours.  Using a brush and some white glue my daughter and I glued the tissue onto the fish.  I found that circles worked the best because when you overlapped it looked the most like scales.  Let it dry, trim the edges and add a googly eye and you’ve got some cute fish.

When it came to decorating the room I bought crepe paper streamers from the dollar store in blue, green and light green.  It was really hubs who showed his creative side in decorating the room.  By hanging the fish from the center of the ceiling and trailing “seaweed” from the middle, the room looked really neat.

I don’t think my photos do it justice but the effect was really cool. At each corner, hubs attached a balloon and more streamers. The kids all loved it.  We then added a few fish to the wall for more decoration.

I kept the table decorations to a minimum because we were going to be doing crafts on it so I bought a cheap white plastic table cloth and used light blue cups and plates to keep with the water theme.

I didn’t really do anything extra special for snacks. We just had the usual medley of fresh fruit platter and bowls of chips. We did do a blue lagoon punch with jujube shark frozen in ice cubes. While the punch was delicious everyone was unanimous that the sharks were disgusting because they went mushy from being wet.

We topped it off with an Ariel the Mermaid ice cream cake from Dairy Queen.

The first craft, which was making a mermaid, went fairly smoothly. I’m glad I spent the extra time a few evenings before the party cutting out the shapes because with the extra girls that came, things were a little hectic.

They turned out really neat. I won’t set out the instructions here because they are all in the book mentioned above.

The second craft was a bit of a disaster. It required way too much hands-on help despite the fact that I had pre-cut everything. The younger girls were constantly asking for assistance and I was relieved when one mom showed up early and pitched in and helped her two girls. I realized that most of the crafts that are in the book is more suited to one on one and not really a group party thing to do unless you have lots of adult helpers.

As for the mermaid decorations, we all loved them so much we left them up for a few extra days. The fish have now been consigned to the “birthday box” for future water themed parties.

The party was a huge hit and my daughter absolutely loved it. It wasn’t an expensive or particularly gorgeous party in my eyes but in my daughter’s it was the best party ever!

And what’s a mermaid party without a mermaid? This is a video we took on a sunnier day where my daughter shows off one of her birthday presents. Of course, I had to make one for her sister too.

What about you? Thrown any fun parties lately?