A Totally Jawsome Shark Party!

My youngest son wanted to have his birthday party just a little bit early this year so he could have all his friends over to the house for a swimming party.

I am, admittedly, one of those moms that LOVES party planning and I really get into a party theme so I looked around for some ideas and suggested a shark party. He thought that was a great idea!

He requested gummy shark candies, cupcakes with shark fins sticking out, and knew he wanted to wear his shark swim shirt and bathing suit.

I had such a fun time planning the party and decided to keep it simple.. well, simplish.

Alec made chocolate cupcakes with a peanut butter filling and we used white chocolate candy melts that we colored with black food coloring to make our shark fins.  We made buttercream frosting and tinted it blue to look like the water and then stuck a hardened fin into each one.

For party decorations we hung a cute banner I found along with all the other party goods at Party Pro.com (No this is not a sponsored post I just always order all our party supplies through them).

We wrapped all four of our deck posts in party streamers and hung cute little signs off each of the corners.  It was not easy to get photos since it was a pretty windy day!

We set a table up under the happy birthday banner and we decided to put the plates and napkins in our little plate holder to keep them from blowing away.

I bought a can of blue silly string for each party guest and tied balloons to the basket at one end of the table and used a balloon weight at the other.  We set out the plastic utensils in mason jars that I decorated with string and life saver candies with a red stripe painted on them to look like life preservers.

We sprinkled some confetti on the table and then set out the dishes of food.  I picked simple party foods and just used some scrapbook paper and rubber stamps to make up some creative labels for them.

I bought the powdered donuts and tinted some leftover frosting orange to make the stripes

Once the pizzas came we made room for the boxes and cleared them away before bringing out the cupcakes and ice cream.

As soon as everyone showed up the kids were playing in the water and running all around.  They did have a silly string fight and chow down on some food but mostly they just jumped and horsed around in the water.

An hour or so before the party was going to be over Evan opened gifts

Then we sang and had cupcakes and ice cream... before all the kids went back to running around and playing.

It was a huge success!