Though she was a Spring baby when she was born in Europe, our little girl’s birthday falls into the very end of Summer here in South Africa, but usually we are able to host the party outside in the patio and most children tend to end up in the swimming pool anyway… Last year, we hosted a Mermaid birthday for her, and it was one of the most fun parties I organised for my children, it was hard work but I felt I could really be quite creative with the decorations and entertainment ideas.
I started off by stocking on fabrics from one of my favourite stores in Johannesburg, Chamdor: I wanted to create a girlie underwater scene, with shimmery tulle and coral sequin details, and then found a gorgeous netting that looked fun to add interest to the tables. Then I moved on to Party Spot to find some basics. I bought some round paper lantern that got turned into floating jelly fish with the help of some ribbons, shower roses and my faithful glue gun. That’s also where I found the pretty plain vanilla lilac paper cups that also got glammed up with some netting left over from the shower roses and some glitter glue. I dug out the little treasure chest we had for Little Monsieur’s Pirate birthday a few years ago, and filled it with seashells, pearl strings, and jewels.
The sweets table was lovely and easy to put together, with a beautiful cake from Carmella’s On The Square, little shark jelly fish, rock candy, all colour coordinated… Always mindful of having healthy options, I added little seaweed looking strings of green grapes, small buckets of raspberries that reminded me of little sea anemonies. Carmella also made some sea-shell macaroons which were just darling. We had small balloons into mesh made to look like buoys, and a super cute seahorse guarding the sweets (he clearly wasn’t scary enough as the little ones had devoured a big chunk of the sweets before long).
The children button stools and tretle tables were hired from Kiddies Theme Parties, and the little seashell plates and napkins from Meri Meri. We had chinese takeaway boxes decorated with mesh, more glitter and seashells as favour boxes.
For activities we had a big sandpit with little buckets for the children to make castles (our neighbours had had a Builders party for their youngest just a few weeks prior and we were able to recycle the sand and buckets), a few trays with pearls for mermaid necklace making, and some with seashells for painting with glitter glue. We also had face painting with the wonderful Monique from Never Grow Up, she does beautiful face paints and kept the little ones entertained before the candle blowing.
I loved putting this super girlie theme together, and looking back to it I can’t wait for the lockdown restrictions to ease so we can get on with the plan I had for this year’s party and have all of Little Madame’s friends join us for a fun afternoon.
With love, S.
A Styled Life 