Beach Party In Your Garden

Everyone loves a beach party but when you just can't face the drive why not bring the beach to your garden? We decided on a beach theme for our daughter's birthday. 

First off the decorations - there's nothing like roping your children in to help. We made coffee carrier carton jellyfish with googly eyes and crepe paper, fish plates and finally a giant surfboard (ok so I did this one after the little ones had gone to bed). I also put out leis for everyone to help themselves to.

Party Food ...

Sailboat Jellies

Make your own jelly to get the right colour. I wanted a yellow beach layer (which I filled with sprinkles to act as rocks) and blue ocean layer - but in the end the sea was a more murky green as no matter how much I left the yellow layer to set the colouring tinted my blue jelly when I poured it on top of the 'beach'. I used satsuma segments and washi tape on cocktail sticks for the sails (of course letting children know not to eat the sticks!)

Watermelon Whale

This was quite simple to carve and fill with a fruit salad (word of warning the watermelon whale is too big for most UK fridges so I wouldn't prepare this until the day) - I had to go to a local exotic fruit market for the right sized watermelon as you'd be hard pushed to find one in your local supermarket. Prepare to get messy - use a large bowl to scoop out all the watermelon.

Not Forgetting that Cake!

Sandcastle Cake

I had great fun making this - I baked four small Victoria sponges, stacked them on top of each other with alternating layers of buttercream and raspberry jam and then secured in place with a kebab skewer whilst I worked on spreading buttercream around the outside. Next I rolled the digestives out with a rolling pin and then rolled the whole cake in the biscuits.

For the decorations I baked star shaped biscuits and adjusted the shape before cooking so that they looked more like starfish. I used shell moulds to make white chocolate shell decorations and the flags I printed at home to match the party invitations. 

Games

Controversially I ditched pass the parcel (I did have one child ask when we were going to do it!) and instead we had a fishing game, find the shell, and musical statues which all hit the mark with the young age group.

I made the fish from card and paper fasteners which worked with the horseshoe magnet I put on the end of some string on a bamboo cane (decorated with more crepe paper).