It seems like just yesterday I was lying in a hospital bed, gazing lovingly at the slippery little newborn nuzzled on my bare chest.
Hannah and me, about 30 seconds after her birth
But it wasn’t just yesterday, it was FOUR YEARS ago! Mind blown.
On the weekend, we hosted Hannah’s very first individual birthday party (she has joint parties every year, but this was the very first one for just her). She’s really into the Little Mermaid right now, so we had a mermaid party, complete with costumes. We hired a party box from Marie Louise Candy Buffets and Events that came with a child sized table and chairs for 10, table cloth, costumes, plates, cups, decorations, and even a lovely little necklace for Hannah to keep. I’m pretty sure the set up would have looked better had I let Jacqui of Marie Louise set it up for me, but I wanted to do it at the very last minute so Daniel didn’t tear it all apart, so I did it myself. Well, not all by myself, Aaron and The Jess and Hannah helped too (whilst Daniel had his nap).
I was trying to get photos of the set up and Hannah sat down and started grinning
There were even above table decorations.
The mermaid skirts were made for older kids, but we just pulled them up to the kids’ armpits and all was well.
The intent was to make some little mermaid puppets with curling ribbon hair and glitter glue all over the tails, and a paddle pop (popsicle) stick to hold them up, but all the kids wanted to do on arrival was play. Duh, I should have known that a bunch of little kids would want to check out all the toys first, rather than doing craft. Rookie mistake.
I planned to do a cheap, super easy version of pin the tail on the donkey outside, but it rained and rained for days before and during the party, so that didn’t quite pan out. Instead of pin the tail on the donkey, it was going to be colour the flower on the mermaid. A big mermaid was going to be drawn on the brick wall outside, with a big flower outline on her tail. The kids would be blindfolded, and spun around, chalk in hand, and then attempt to colour in the flower. Closest to the flower wins. But that obviously didn’t happen since I didn’t want 11 muddy wet kids running around afterwards on our beige carpets.
We did manage to play pass the parcel, which went down a treat, minus the one layer that I wrapped but forgot to actually put stuff in (a consequence of watching TV whilst wrapping, I’m sure). I also wanted them to play musical chairs outside where there was more room, but since we couldn’t, we played musical bump inside instead. At Hannah’s age, I think that was better anyway.
What is musical bump, I hear you asking? When the music starts, all the kids dance, and when it stops they sit down on the floor. Last one to sit down is out. Except we just kept track of who was out and who was not because everyone still wanted to dance. As a bonus, they burned lots of their hyper little kid energy off with all the jumping. Because that is pretty much how they all danced: Jump, jump, jump, hold hands and jump some more. So cute. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any photos of the games because I was far too busy running them, and Aaron was far too busy cooking dinner for the kids.
After all the jumping, they were quite hungry, so we sat them down at the lovely little 10 kid table, with one sitting on a parent’s lap because I forgot to count Hannah when I ran my numbers. I know, I know…. The house was amazingly quiet for about 2 minutes as they gobbled up their chicken nuggets, chips, mini hot dogs, meat pies and sausage rolls.
Hannah loved all of her presents, but didn’t want to slow down long enough to let us read the cards to her and thank who they were from. We made her do it anyway. Typical four year old I suppose.
It was impossible to get a decent present opening shot. Hannah wouldn’t face away from the wall and kids were trying to get as close as they could to see what Hannah got. And yes, that is a giant blow up dinosaur under Hannah’s chair.
And then came the part all the kids had been waiting for: Cake. At Hannah’s request, I made a strawberry cake with fresh pureed strawberries. Two actually. I needed that many to make a mermaid Hannah cake. I couldn’t find a cake board or platter big enough to hold the cake though, so I went to Bunnings and got some MDF cut to size for $3.50. Bargain.
Mermaid cake in Hannah’s likeness
After scouring the internet for mermaid cake ideas, I decided to just create my own because all of the internet cakes were either a) way too hard b) hideous, or c) used an actual barbie doll, and I didn’t really want to be scrubbing bits of cake and frosting off of Barbie afterwards.
I traced the rectangular cake pan and cut out the exact size, then drew a mermaid shape onto the cut outs to make the template for the actual cake.
Draw the mermaid and cut it out. I used and off cut from the side of the tail for the top of the head (cut to the right shape of course)
the final cake template made from two rectangles (sorry about the bad photos, taken on my phone)
The cake after being cut to shape. Shove off cuts into crevices if you need to.
before the face details were added
I made some butter cream frosting and first frosted the face, neck and arms. Then I added some pink food colouring and did the tail. Finally, I made a batch of chocolate frosting to do the hair. To make the hair look like hair, just use a knife to make indents in the frosting going the right direction. Same for the end of the tail. The tail beads are edible, as is the glitter. Never mind that the edible glitter cost $9 for a tiny jar. Totally worth it. Plus I already had it from when I made The Jess’ wedding cake pavolva.
The face
I drew the eye outlines, and the arm details on with a tube of black writing icing and made a little bit of blue icing for the irises. The clam shell top was made from roll out icing. I wanted to use real shells, but I couldn’t find any at the shops. In hindsight, the whole cake would have been better had I used roll out icing instead of butter cream. It would have been smoother and more professional looking, but whatever, Hannah didn’t care.
Time to sing Happy birthday. Or as Daniel calls, it, Happy the birthday. Like my mermaid hair?
“Mommy, when can I have another party?” Hannah asked me after everyone left.
“I love parties!” Daniel told Aaron. I guess the party was well received.
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Copyright 2013 Sheri Thomson
Tags: birthday party, family, how to make a mermaid cake, life, mermaid cake, mermaid party, mermaid party ideas, preschool party games
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