Last year, right after her princess party, Caroline asked for a ballerina party. I was really excited about that, since a winter ballerina party could be Nutcracker themed and there are SO many adorable possibilities there. Luckily I didn’t do much (any) planning early, so when she changed her mind and asked for a mermaid party instead I didn’t have to undo anything to throw a mermaid party.

I didn’t do as much as I have in the past (her winter fairy party was my favorite and also was CRAZY involved) but since the kids are bigger and more able to entertain themselves I just threw a bunch of balloons on the floor and they took care of the rest.

My theme was Undersea Wonderland, since obviously that’s where mermaids live. I had the very talented Becca from Jumping Jax make a custom invite and printable decorations for me. She is fast, creative and afordable (she also did Evan’s pirate party) and I highly recommend her.

Most of my party supplies came from Oriental Trading Company, as they usually do. This year, they gave me a budget and sent me a bunch of awesome stuff for free, although I ended up ordering twice as much stuff as they offered so I gave them a big pile of money anyway. Story of my party-planning life: budgets are not my strong point. But Caroline has an excellent party, everyone ate all my food and I would definitely say this was another successful birthday.

Decorations:

Mermaid treasure

Sparkle jelly fish made from Oriental Trading Co lanterns

Real life: pen on the wall of the stairs and my husband’s dirty socks in the railing

These giant balloons are my favorite birthday tradition

Glitter EVERYWHERE, but I love how these look

Food:

These are my gooey vanilla sparkle cookies, just renamed.

Ha ha ha ha School of Fish

Mermaid wands

Octopus rolls were an unexpected hit! It’s just crescent roll dough sheets cut into shapes with edible eyes stuck on.

Seaweed dip = spinach dip

Crabwiches! Eyes glued to toothpicks, sandwiches are ham and swiss

Sand dollar sugar cookies (same ones I made for Evan’s pirate party). Caroline cut these out herself. HERSELF. Like, my sister supervised but Caroline rolled and cut the dough entirely herself.

Cheese triangles as shark teeth

I bought a special starfish cookie cutter for these

Puff pastry cut into stars with cream cheese frosting filling, sprinkled with a little gold sugar to make them bumpy

Oyster cookies! I used two different kinds of Pepperidge Farm cookies (one is shortbread, one is coconut) and the same frosting I used on the cake

The “pearls” are chocolate candies from Oriental Trading Co.

IT IS NOT A DAVIS PARTY WITHOUT CUCUMBER SANDWICHES

I broke my own rule and made a cake. The cake itself is from a box, but I made cream cheese buttercream frosting.

I spent WAY TOO MUCH TIME looking for a mermaid to go on top…and found this one on our Christmas tree. It was Caroline’s ornament from last year.

The sand is graham cracker crumbs, the writing is a sparkle frosting pen, and I even bought special teal food coloring to make the frosting ocean-colored. Caroline picked the candles.

Rock candy from Oriental Trading Co

These were WAY cuter on Pinterest, but as much of a mess as they are the kids loved them and they looked cute on the tray

I sent E to buy “mermaid beer”. This was the best he could do. It was delicious though!

Blue punch mixed with Sprite = sea water. We also had pink mermaid punch, but I somehow forgot to take a photo.

Straws from Oriental Trading, flags from Jumping Jax

HERE’S A TIP. Don’t make sea glass candy. Melt Jolly Ranchers on parchment paper instead. Dust with powdered sugar. DONE. I mixed it with my jelly sharks because I ran out of bowls.

Fish sticks. Obviously.

Ocean Jello. Man, there was a LOT of blue food coloring at this party.

Fun:

Party favors

Make the sand/seashell ornaments

It needed some adult supervision but they all came out really cute

My sister drew this for me approximately 30 minutes before the guests showed up. She is very talented.

Waiting her turn…

The kids LOVED this game

Cake eating counts as an activity

So does mermaid punch

Cake time!

Happy 4th Birthday Mermaid Caroline!

Thank you to Oriental Trading Company for some of the supplies! I got the 4 balloon, the other balloons, the straws, the lanterns, the pearl chocolates, the necklaces, the wands, the straws, and the rock candy from them. Plus other stuff I’m forgetting and/or forgot to take pictures of (like the green crepe paper that turned my bookcase into a seaweed forest.

The shells and craft supplies are from Michael’s. All the fabric is left over from her previous parties, as are the lights and the crystal curtain behind the food table.

Caroline’s mermaid costume was her Halloween costume. It’s from Chasing Fireflies, a super awesome place to get costumes. Evan also wore his shark costume for part of the time, but we had to take it away when he started attacking guests. True story.

You can find links to most of the inspiration and products on my Pinterest board here. Not everything from my party is Pinterest-worthy. It’s not professional or super fancy or perfect and after 5 years of throwing parties for my kids I am TOTALLY OK with that. We had a wonderful time. I had a ton of family here and they were all so so so helpful. I could never have gotten even half this stuff done without them. An hour before the guests showed up I handed Baby Linc to my sister’s new fiance and abandoned them. He did great. Better than great. I hope I can convince him to come back for Caroline’s party again next year.

Thank you to EVERYONE who came and everyone who helps and everyone who made Caroline’s day so special.

As always, ask me if you have a question on where something came from or how I made something. Apologies for the weird colors/lighting on the photos, it got dark at like THREE O’CLOCK so this were taken at a crazy high ISO under overhead lights.

BIRTHDAY WEEK! Today, Sunday, the day after Caroline’s party, I’ve finally managed to think about the fact that Christmas is 4 days away and I can’t even FIND half the gifts I bought the kids (no for real, WHERE DID I HIDE THEM????).

Sunday:

Swiiiiiiiiiiing

I only burned myself three times and the beer was an effective painkiller.

I REJECT YOUR BABY BATHTUB! GIVE ME REAL WATER!

Monday:

Proud of his gold star from the dentist

Wraps make good blankets when you use the stroller

You brought me to a casino AGAIN?!

Tuesday:

School uniforms don’t have sock and shoe requirements

WHY U PUT ME IN THIS CAGE?

NOM TULA NOM NOM

Wednesday:

She insisted on the jaunty hat

Screw you candy thermometer, you are USELESS

He’s disappointed none of those things are food

Thursday:

Daddy chat time

Outtake from my attempt at a santa baby picture. I have 30 more like this.

SHUT UP.

Friday:

Cookie time with Aunt Carolyn

I do not want to talk about what is happening here.

Two fancy ladies at The Nutcracker

Saturday:

Two selfies in a row is ridiculous, but the birthday girl is too cute

A shark playing Pin The Tail On The Mermaid

In the Rainbow My Little Pony game, EVERYONE WINS

The kids had a dentist appointment on Monday at 11:20 (our dentist is awesome and the hygienists do their appointments simultaneously in adjoining rooms so no one has to wait). Instead of taking Evan back to school afterward, like a responsible parent would, we got cheeseburgers for lunch and went to Foxwoods to go ice skating. I figured it wouldn’t be crowded on a weekday afternoon and I was right – when we got there just before they opened at 2 pm there wasn’t even anyone to rent skates from. A few minutes after 2 the employees showed up and we had the whole rink to ourselves for 30 minutes before anyone else realized it was a gorgeous day for outdoor skating and found the rink hidden behind the building.

I don’t even feel bad about Evan missing another afternoon of school. I am one hundred percent sure that he will learn to read and write and ‘rithmetic and all that good stuff. I am not sure he’s yet learned that his parents are fun and the holidays are magical and that skating is super cool.

Unfortunately, both children are terrible skaters. They’ve only been once or twice before and there weren’t any cones or chairs or anything for them to hold on to, so there was a lot of falling down. Luckily they both learned to get back up and didn’t cry or give up. I was very proud, even if they were still falling down after an hour on the ice. They both asked to go back again every day, so maybe by the end of January they’ll figure it out.

Big girl camera and iPhone photos below, so I can prove Linc and I were there too.

I spent 3 hours and $900 on my minivan today, and if anyone had ever told me that would be my life 10 years ago I would have died.

Sunday:

Chalk markers changed my life.

She will literally sleep on any flat surface.

Bunk bed building buddies

Monday:

Good bye, see ya, I’m done here.

Matching princesses

My goal for Monday was to clean the new shared room. This was after THREE HOURS. We own too. Much. Stuff.

Tuesday:

Everyday I’m scooterin’

SO CLOSE TO SPRING. WE WERE SO CLOSE.

Peek-a-boo princess

Wednesday:

Hugging a beach ball

Hugging a different beach ball

Learning to dive is his MISSION IN LIFE

Thursday:

Go $#%& yourself, Winter

Birthday balloon update: Still mostly floating after 3 months.

Thursdays are exhausting

Friday:

Dress up and glitter slime playdate

Showing off the muscles he grew when he ate his whole sandwich

Saturday:

Warm up moves

She thinks having a blue tongue is the most AMAZING thing ever

Handsome

ONCE nice day this week and I’m ruined. I’ve lost my ability to handle the cold at all. I’m like a snake that shed its winter skin and all I can do is think about how nice and warm I would be if I lived in Florida or California or Hawaii.

Although right now I will accept 2 more weeks of cold as long as we can have beautiful, warm, sunny weather for Evan’s 5th birthday. The world of “these are your friends because I like their moms” and “these are my friends because I go to school with them” collided, and my guest list is a little out of control. Mostly that’s exciting, since this might be the first party Evan REALLY remembers and it’s going to be super fun. But also having all those people trapped in my house instead of using the porch/patio is going to be…well, horrible. It would be horrible.

Fingers crossed.

It appears these are the only posts I have in me right now. It’s a weird combination of being too busy and not at all busy. I spend a lot of time on my computer doing other things (photo editing, writing Glee recaps or trashy gossip stories for my new gigs, Facebook chatting, refreshing Facebook to make sure I haven’t missed any good Buzzfeed quizes) but none of that is interesting enough to blog about.

I’m also deep in pirate party planning mode for Evan’s birthday. I remember thinking I was a crazy person when I started planning his first birthday party (Circus party! Still one of my favorites) in January, but I think starting in March is even more crazy. So much to do in so little time!

Sunday:

It was so much easier to say “No, I’ll just have a salad” before they put a Five Guys in my town.

BEST KIND. Anyone who disagrees is just wrong.

Can I get 3 million shares on my blog post for taking this? No?

Monday:

Cute from the back…

…cute from the front.

Editing isn’t so bad when this is the baby you stare at for hours.

Tuesday:

Refusing to go to school until they see Idina & The Roots sing Let It Go

Basically heaven for a 3 year old

Yo ho let’s go!

Wednesday:

Somehow climbing in the snow is STILL fun for them

I am extremely jealous of their swim classes

I was conned into buying toddler Elsa because Caroline now recognizes “Sale” signs at Target

Thursday:

Why 3 year olds should not use mascara

Jaunty!

It’s crazy hair day every day in our house

Friday:

More pirates! it’s an invasion!

A rare look at the room I was attempting to “take back” from the children. It’s not going so well.

He insists on “swimming” in the bath now.

Saturday:

The friendliest koi fish ever

Tiny hipster children play cornhole at a brewery in an old mill. I can’t even.

That’s the cupcake happy dance

I am the only parent in the world who doesn’t actually hate springing forward. We don’t have anywhere to be until this afternoon, which means I got to sleep in even if the kids got up to play. Plus they’ve both been falling asleep on the couch at 6 pm, so I don’t think bedtime will be too hard. Basically, I am the worst.

I am sure I will pay for it later this week when they get up at 5:30 and paint my dining room table (again).