Under the Sea.

I have found out as a mom that one of my love languages for my kids is through planning fun birthday parties.  We usually save money by having it at the house and do not pull out all the bells and whistle but I like the small fun touches that set the parties apart from the rest. 

My daughter has adapted my philosophy about birthdays and has already planned her parties until she is 10! So here is the latest edition of Happy Birthday to you! 

My Daughter currently loves Ariel. We are not sure exactly why, she hasn't seen the movie, but she loves her, especially in her GREEN princess dress. We would stop at Target in January and she would ask to go see Ariel and count how many are there so she would make sure there were enough for her birthday. So we did. Last year we had a Cinderella party and I had the gull to try to make a princess dress cake. It all turned our but thankfully but since then I am in charge of a princess cake until she gets sick fo them. 

 So this year she chose the cake flavor too, Chocolate. I made a simple eggless cake recipe. I placed it in a glass 8 cup Pyrex dish. I greased it well to make sure it would come out in one piece. I baked it and it came out tiny. (I think the greasing may not let it rise to much but I can't risk the cake being stuck so..) SO, I went on to make 2 more recipes of cake in 8x 8 dishes for the bottom layers. I cut out a barbie body sized whole in the middle before placing them in the fridge to set up a little more. This is important, last year I didn't cut a whole and froze the cakes to keep them fresh and I had to chistle the center whole. After the cake was cool I cut off the rounded tops to level each layer and frosted. I chose buttercream, a simple version, I did the crumb layer then fridge and the final layers of frosting and decoration. I usually bake a few days in advance then freeze or frigerate until a few hours before frosting to let the cake warm up just a bit. Also, put the cake in the frigdge after completing decorations let the frosting set up so it doesn't melt and crate a horrible mess. 

As you can see it came out pretty good, that's what my daughter says. Little did she know I didn't stick the barbie in the cakes until the night before and the layers only reached the top of her legs.. (Hence the added ruffles on top!!! Mom's gotta do what she's gotta do!) But overall I tried a few new techniques, made a whole lotta frosting, and we made it! In the end, the look on my daughter's face makes everything ok! 

This is one simple decoration we made. My younger daughter had a Zoo/ jungle theme party so we reused the flowers and leaves for this small arrangement with a little Ariel on top.

The Foam coral is a rage on Pinterest, so I wanted to try it out. They turned out great but they bent a but so we had to use dowels to hold them up. I also placed them in big ball jars, which I have on hand, to help keep them upright. We decorated the jars with tinsel found at party stores. 

Balloons have been our new try this birthday season. I found online some cute little balloon arches and wanted to try it out. You need some balloon tape- found at a party store. It looks like clear ribbon with small holes in it. It is used for balloon arches but I use it to create these fun little under the sea balloons. (If you are doing an arch the ballons need to be filled with helium but mine were not just tacked to the wall.) I also added some tinsel on tape strips to create a little water effect. Emma helped me do most of this and she loved it.

Next are these cute crabs I also found online.  Only takes toothpicks, orange slices, circle shape gummies, eatable eyes and decorating gel. The orange slice is left alone, the circle shapes cut in half and I used some smaller cuts for the eyes, and connect the eyes using decorating gels. Place the toothpicks in the orange slice and refrigerate until you need them. They are so fun and quiet the eatible treat for the adults!

I hope these give you fun birthday ideas! It didn't cost us so much to create these fun additives to this Ariel Party! Have fun and create!