Ashton turns 3 - Part 3

It has taken me two years to recover from Ashton's first birthday party. I mean, for real. There were actual invitations for that, I rented linens and tables and chairs, made paper flag bunting and favors...I even had signs for the drinks. It took like a month to pull off, we had way too many people, and it was approximately one thousand degrees out.

So I never threw Ashton a second birthday party. This year, on his third birthday, I invited three of my friends that have kids that Ashton hangs out with a lot. (Three year olds get their friends picked for them I'm afraid. If I'm friends with the mom, Ashton is going to be friends with their kid. That's the breaks.) Don't be deceived, between me and the other moms, there were eight kids/babies, but I knew that was as much as I could handle so I kept it small. Plus I had nearly no time to put something together so I said to myself, "I'm just going to set up the pool, sprinkler and water table in the backyard and call it a water theme."

Here we go with the "water themed" birthday party. First, the setup.

(Sorry Patty for the balloons, if you're reading this. I disposed of them properly!)

That awkward blue "table" in the front is where we did our ocean-in-a-bottle craft. I pre-labeled the bottles with their names and pre-filled them with some clear baby oil, and the kids added blue water, sparkles, sand, shells, and fish.

Afterwards I hot-glued the bottle tops on and that was that! They came out...okay.

I should have used more baby oil in each bottle. The idea is that when you swirl it, the oil and water don't mix so it's kind of a lava-lamp effect. Or, um, should be. It was also a disappointment that all the stuff we put in sank. It would have been way cooler to have stuff suspended between the water and the oil when you shook it. Oh well. It killed about 6 minutes of the party ;)

Then we had pizza, cake and presents (I made crazy cake, wacky cake, depression cake or whatever you want to call it because of Ashton's egg allergy (depression cake because that's the era the recipe came out of, when it was hard to get milk, eggs and butter - this cake has none of those ingredients)). It was blue with some plastic fish on it. Water theme, remember?

Both boys wore clothes of the aquatic persuasion.

Now at this point I hope you are thinking: what is that amazing shark watermelon behind Ashton just there? Well, the answer is, it's an amazing shark watermelon! Yes, I carved it. Ashton "helped".

And it came out great. I made some blue jello (hellooo, the water) and it was the piece de resistance at the party.

I gave out the Melissa and Doug "Water Wow!" books as party favors and that, my friends, is it! I think Ashton had a great time turning 3. And I also think we've beaten this topic to death, so this is my last post on it. I can hear your sighs of relief! ;)