Beach Bash Birthday

Be prepared for a long, picture heavy post ahead!   Well it was finally the day of the beach bash birthday for my now 10 yr old daughter.. (waah! she is my last one, now all are in double digits!!)   We started the party by posing with the surfboards and beach balls in the family room. 

I thought I got a picture of the girls crafting, but realized when I downloaded my pics, that I had not.  They sat on the large beach blanket (a vinyl tablecloth) to make their craft.   When they were working on their flip flops, I was working on some last minute details.  I bought each of the girls flip flops from the dollar store and some really fun summer fabric at JoAnn fabrics. 

Here is one of the finished pairs, that one of the girls immediately starting wearing in the yard. She left them there  during the water fight. 

We played pin the tail on the flamingo.  The flamingo was made out of neon poster board.

We had some games planned for outside, but it was literally a zillion degrees out.  (in the mid 90s!) and it was just too hot to do much.  We did not put up the volleyball/badmiton net because of heat.  We did have  a mini obstacle course, but made sure to  include the sprinklers.  I had the girls put on goggles and an intertube (it was too hot for the swim wings) and then go to only  a couple of stations. 

They threw hula hoops over the hula girl (all bought at the dollar store)

They fed tiki man small plastic balls..  Since it was so hot (and windy!) tiki man just ended up being propped up  because the board kept blowing in the wind. 

We threw beach balls in the crab, but ended up chasing them in neighbors yard most of the time, so then the girls just ..

had fun running in the sprinklers and shooting water from the water tubes. 

We also played a few games with water balloons, which was a lot of fun.   They then had a water balloon fight with the rest of the balloons. 

Young girls can make a pet or a baby out of almost anything.  During the water ballon fight, Kara decided she wanted to keep one of her balloon "babies".   She named him Bob.  A little while later she asked for a band aid.  I thought someone might have been hurt.  Turns out the band aid was for Bob, he had  sprung a leak.

I was able to finally  find some frisbees the day before the party at Michaels. We used these under the plates on the table.

Chicken salad crabs, hot dogs and chips were on the menu for lunch.

I also served a super fun  watermelon shark  that I saw on Sun Scholars .  Mine was more cute than scary, because I did not get the angle of the mouth sharp enough, but the kids loved it anyway.

Since it was the 4th of July weekend, we also served 4th of July fruit "sparklers".

There was a dessert table, decorated with large paper lanterns that I found on clearance at Target.  

We had swim/surf marshmellow pops, beach mix, beach cupcakes and candy.

I am a little bummed that I did not have one of  the details for the cupcakes. A few weeks ago Kara was playing with the paper umbrellas.  I told her they were for the party and then put them in a safe place.  I can not remember where the safe place is!  When I realized I could not find them, I asked Kara's dad to buy some more.  The dollar store had sold out of them!  He checked another store as well,  but they did not have them either.   While the umbrellas would have been cute,  the cupcakes still made my daughter smile. 

I had the girls pose with their beach bag goody bags before going home.

They each got to pick out a beach bag  that I found at the dollar store.   The favors inside of their bag were their decorated flip flops,  the frisbes from lunch, a visor and a bottle of bubbles.  They were supposed to get a glow bracelet, but I didnt realize until aftewards that they did not get handed out.   The bags and all of favors only totaled about $5 per chid, and it was items they will hopefully be able to use.

 

I told Emma (a family friend) I was going to post this because it is so funny.  It was soooo hot that I found an almost 13 yr old in a kiddy pool trying to keep cool.   You know it must be very hot for that to happen.  LOL!