Shark Birthday Party

As I mentioned before Ethan has been into sharks lately. He loves doing research, drawing pictures, and talking about them. So he was very excited to have a shark birthday.
I have included lots of pictures of the decorations, etc so I can do this again or so you won't have to do all the research. I had a fun time putting this party together. There wasn't a lot of shark themed stuff out there so I got to be creative with it.

This was the cake. I can't take full credit because my husband helped me a lot. He is so amazing! We tried to copy an image we saw on Coolest Birthday cakes. The shape started out with two loaf pans stacked on top of each other with the one hanging over as much as it could without falling over. We then carved it into the shape of the shark. We used a piece of the trimmings to form his bottom jaw. The fin is a piece of cardboard cut and frosted. His teeth were made from fondant. The rest of him was just tinted frosting. We should have done a crumb coat but by 1 am we were done with this thing and I couldn't be my normal perfectionist self when I had the awesome help of my honey.

This table was too big for our cake so last minute we added some other sea life. I made a corral reef/sea weed thing by cutting and putting fruit slices on a skewer which was placed in a cupcake. The sand was turbinado sugar. We also tried doing schools of fish but they didn't turn out so well. I really wanted to experiment with the candy corral reefs that Cake Boss made but I ran out of time.


It was so fun to see the look on the boys faces when we cut into the cake. They said it looked like blood and guts. That's why I chose to use red velvet cake and it made me happy for them to see my vision.

My amazingly talented friend Alisha designed this invitation for me. I fell in love with this little guy. We had a great time putting these together. I love how his mouth opened up and that's where we wrote the info.

Alisha made this for me with her awesome Cricut.

Jared added the fin to the mailbox. I loved it!

We hung sea weed from the ceiling and blew up blue balloons to look like bubbles.

To add to the under the sea feel we hung a fishing net from the ceiling and attached a birthday banner using opened paper clips to look like hooks from the fishes mouths. Thanks Alisha for all your help on this.

Alisha also made this for us. I think I need to hire her as my party planner. This was pin the diver in the sharks mouth game. We also played traditional birthday party games with a shark twist to them like:
1.Musical chairs-they all found seats on the boat and when the music played they danced or played around on the boat until the music stopped. The person who didn't have a seat on the boat got eaten by a shark(me)
2. Tag-the person "it" was the shark and everyone else were fish. If the shark tagged the fish he had to go to the "frying pan" where he stood with his legs open like he was dead. He could return to the game if another fish was able to get away from the shark and crawl through his legs. (this was one of their favorites)
3.What time is it Mr. Shark -the shark stood with their backs to the fish. The fish asked what time is it Mr. Shark and the shark would say a time like 5 0'clock then the fish would take 5 steps closer to the shark. If the shark said it's lunch time then he would turn around and try and catch a fish. They would be the next shark.
4.Stomp the balloons-we blew up gray balloons and drew sharks on them. The kids had to get the sharks before the sharks got them. It was fun watching them try and pop some of the hard ones. We added a paper fin to one of the balloons before we blew it up and whoever got it won a prize (bragging rights.)

We feed them pizza (shark fins) and this scary watermelon.

Since there wasn't any shark plates I wanted to add a shark fin to these. Jared had the brilliant idea to cut the fin out of one plate making sure the folded edge was in the center of the plate and then cutting a slit through another plate and sliding the fin of one plate through the slit of the other plate. I hope that's not too confusing.
For the drinks we did a blue drink with shark fruit snacks frozen in ice cube trays. Note: let the water get cold for a while before adding the sharks otherwise the sharks will dissolve.

These were the take home bags. This was the low budget version. You could also do some little silver pails with "fish food." I just used the white lunch bags and glued waves and a fin on the bottom.

These are the tags that Alisha helped me do. I thought this would be a fun way to put the kids names on the bag. Alisha had the brilliant idea to laminate them so the boys could put them on their backpacks. They loved them. My favorite thing is the shark bite.

This is what we put in the bags. I found the gummy sharks and the toys at the Dollar Tree. The fruit snacks and crackers at the grocery store.
*I had a blast doing this. I couldn't have done pulled it off without the help of Alisha and my husband. Thanks for putting up with my craziness! You're the best! I will always remember this.