Happy Birthday Matthew!

Today Matthew turns 11!  Where does the time go?  This year we celebrated Matt’s birthday with a Fishing Lunch Party. Of course Matt is still extremely interested in his Military things but this year he has also started to grow fond of fishing. He has had several opportunities this year fishing in his grandparents lake and also now his Aunt and Uncle now have a fishing cabin to use.

Table setting / Decoration / Crafts:
The weekend before Matthews’s birthday the kids created paper mache fish and spent a couple days decorating them with paint and some with glitter and even beads. These fish were displayed in our windows as part of the party decorations. We used brown grocery bags and traced a fish we drew as a template. We then painted them in blue, green and orange with water colors. These were placed at each place setting and all around the table. The tablecloth consisted of a aqua green plastic cloth and fish netting layered over top. We found clear fish plates at the Christmas Tree Shop that we used at each place setting. We also cut out rectangular placemats from a dollar store world map. For the kids party favors we found tiny plastic cases and created mini tackle boxes that we filled with gummy fish, lobsters, octopus’s, sharks, sea horses etc. These were a great hit! The beautiful cake consisted of 4 layers with blue icing. Using marzipan we formed fish and seaweed to place all around the cake – wow it looked so cute!

Food:
We bought 3 different flavors (colors) of Goldfish Crackers and served them in mini fishbowls. The party drink turned out to be completely adorable. We served Swamp Juice to the kids. To make this drink you boil tapioca pearls and then soaked half of them in green food coloring and the other half in blue food coloring. Place these in the bottom of a clear glass. Then you take Lemonade and add either a little bit of blue food coloring or some kind of blue juice. The idea is make the lemonade look a little dirty. We then added a few gummy fish and a blue straw with a worm stuck to it. With fishing worms on the brain we came up with the idea to serve them Shrimp and Beef Lo Mein for the main course. The kids loved every minute of it!