Ocean Themed Play Date

Here's my little sea princess wearing her shell crown. It came out so pretty and sparkly! It ended up being a very fun craft, but wow was it mess to make! The glitter + sand sprinkled on them means that this is definitely an on the back deck craft. Yesterday when my friend Margaret and her two daughters came over for a summer play date we started by making shell crowns. I got idea from my latest copy of Family Fun Magazine, the directions can be found here and the template here.

I really like how they came out and think the sweep up was definitely worth it. I precut the templates out of colored poster board. The directions say cardstock but the shells are pretty heavy so I am skeptical as to if that would've been sturdy enough.

We took of the bottle top and spread a very thick layer of tacky glue over the template. Even so I thought for sure I'd need to do some hot glue repair. Surprisingly, after a lengthy drying period, i.e. several hours, the shells did stay put when I formed the crown. While I wiped down the table the girls worked on coloring in these fun wooden stand-up princesses. I got these for a dollar each and they came with a little set of markers to color with. It was a nice quiet calm down craft.

We also made the ocean in a bottle and ER really likes hers. She's been shaking that thing for hours now. She won't put it down. It doesn't make for the prettiest picture because unbeknownst to me I was out of blue and green food coloring. So I'd look at the directions on Family Fun to see it.

We had one of the easiest play date lunches ever: cold cuts and cheese platters with fruit salad. Each girl got to make their own sandwich; I had a fish cookie cutter to make them all cute. But darn it. I forgot all about it when it came to meal time.Since lunch was low key and no heat we had time for a fun snack, these pearly bites also from Family Fun Magazine. They're supposed to look like little clam shells, aren't they cute! I like how they didn't require me to bake anything and needed minimal ingredients. They were pretty quick to make too. I think they passed the taste test, judging from the smile below!I used paint pens to decorate a little sand and water bucket for each of the girls to put their crafts in along with the pink rubber ducky we gave them as favors. But I forgot to take a picture of them. Two things I forgot to do, geez memory is going already! I was pretty happy with how the underwater scene one one came out too, so that's a bummer. We will be crafting away with the girls again this weekend at the much anticipated fairy themed birthday party for Margaret's oldest. Can't wait to share the pictures from that one!