Little Mister's DIY Shark Birthday Party!

When it came time to start planning Little Mister's 2nd birthday party I was at a loss for a theme. Least year we did Mickey Mouse and I was hoping to carry out my love for Disney and do a Disney theme each year, but sadly Little Mister is more into Hot Wheels these days than Disney. Needless to say, it was back to the drawing board. I thought a Hot Wheels theme would be fun but finding decor to go along with that was a challenge and I was quickly loosing steam in the creativity department. I chatted with my friends at Skip Hop and was given the idea of a Shark birthday party. Sharks are pretty "hot" right now so I thought it would be a great theme for his birthday and I figured that I better do it while he was just turning two and couldn't protest yet.

So I set off to think of some ideas that would go along with the theme. I even reached out to my lovely readers via Facebook to grab some ideas! I knew I wanted to do a "cutesy" shark theme rather than scary since my little guy is still little so using anything "Bruce" from Finding Nemo would be out since he was a little to scary for what I wanted...

Photo Credits: Disney's Finding Nemo

I then thought going a more realistic route would be better so I set off to good ol' Google Images to find some real images of sharks and practically peed myself laughing when I saw this peculiar little shark. While he is hilarious and would have made for a great conversation topic at the party, I continued my search for more shark inspiration...

Photo Credits: National Geographic

I was excited to have hit the jackpot when I typed "happy baby cartoon shark" into my Google search engine and saw these little fella's pop up. They made me feel warm and fuzzy so I decided to go with them. I took the inspiration of their dark blue and light blue shades and rolled with it. Read on to see what I came up with!

Photo Credits: 123RF

Now when guests arrive it is important to remember that the first thing they see when they walk up to ring the doorbell is none other than the door. So I borrowed an image off Google, pulled up PicMonkey, resized my blank photo to an 8 1/2 X 11 size in pixels and set to work. To my dismay I ran out of scotch tape when it came time to hang the image so please excuse the packing tape.. 

I printed out my Warning Sharks Up Ahead image on a white piece of cardstock so that it would hold up a little better than regular printer paper.

Knowing that the party would be held in the kitchen, family room, and backyard. I decorated the entryway to the kitchen with multi-layered (and colored) streamers, balloons, and topped it with a "shark zone" sign that I created also via PicMonkey. Guests laughed as they ducked through the streamers and entered the shark zone. 

My kitchen/family room ceiling turned into a "waves and bubbles" with streamers and balloons, giving the room a festive yet underwater feel as guests gathered around the shark food table.

Little Misters eating area was transformed with streamers, a DIY flag banner hanging around his high chair and of course a sharky birthday boy sign. I constructed the banner out of different colors of felt and strung them together with a blue piece of yarn! In attempts to save my carpet I also took an extra piece of the table cloth and attached it to the bottom of Little Mister's chair! I was thrilled when my imagination turned that table cloth into "water" as well! Woohoo!

My table wasn't big enough to hold the plates, utensils, and other food serving items so I cleared off my kitchen island and arranged them on that. I grabbed three different colors of cups, two different colors of plates, two different colors of napkins, and dark blue utensils for the party. I also bought some blue Kool-Aid (which normally is not consumed in my house) to add a special blue drink for the party!

Here's where the fun begins. I wanted to get creative with naming the food items so I visited Pinterest for some inspiration. Please note at some of these shark food names may have come from other websites but I honestly looked at so many that I cannot remember which came from which. For clarification, I am not trying to claim these names as my own :) For the food we have...

Shark Fins & Slow Swimmers (blue chips and homemade salsa)
For The Humans (cheese puffs, Mr. Hunkys request)
Shark Bait (Goldfish and Ritz crackers)

Shark Infested Waters (blue jello with a gummy shark inside)

Fish Food (Fruity Pebbles)

Shark Cakes (Vanilla cupcakes dyed blue with sprinkles topped with a blue buttercream and a gummy shark)

& Shark Salad! (Carved by my talented friend Amanda!)

Little Mister got his very own cupcake that had a blue 2 candle! He was more interested in the frosting than us singing to him but oh well!

For the favors I splurged and had my friend Randi from Scribblers Crayons construct these adorable Shark Crayon Birthday Favors for me! Randi took my theme and created an adorable package for me to give out to the kids as favors and I was so excited when there was even a bite mark from the corners! How cute is that!!

*Scribblers Crayons wants to give MCO readers a 15% discount! Use the code MCO15OCT to receive 15% off your purchase during the month of October 2013!

Everyone had a fabulous time at the Shark birthday party and thought that the food names were hilarious! The only person who wasn't having a fun time was Mrs. Bow Jangles who was being taunted by the cupcake that fell to the floor. Lucky for her mommy gave her a treat for being a good girl and not eating it though! :)

So where did I buy everything and how much did I spend?

Well as you can see I DIYed almost everything so I used a lot of what I had on hand to create things such as the felt banner and the signs, but for the things that I didn't have on hand I hit up my local dollar store and picked up almost everything! Not including the food it cost me about $30 or less to put this party together! 

What types of parties have you DIYed?