My girls’ birthdays are exactly two weeks apart. They both love parties, so we try to plan something fun for them and a few friends. A couple weeks ago, my older daughter turned 9. We hosted a beach themed party in our back yard and had six of her friends over. They played on the slip n slide:

They also raced to see who could fish the most plastic worms out of a bucket of ice water with their toes:

Then we had a scavenger hunt/sand castle building contest. We had 14 cups of sand with trinkets hidden inside, such as a princess, some flags, some seashells, and a couple of palm trees. Each team had to find a certain number of items in order to build their sand castle. If they found an item that belonged to the other team, they had to re-pack the trinket back in the sand and put it back where they found it. So fun! Here are both of the teams building their sand castles:

My husband actually came up with the idea for the cake. We baked the cake tipped to one side so there was a shallow end and a deep end. Then we made blue jello, mixed it up with some cool whip, and spooned it into the “deep end”. Sprinkled pulverized vanilla wafers on the beach end to make it look like sand. She wanted the candles to look like a campfire, so we just made “rocks” out of chocolate chips. The dolphin came with one of her Barbies. My husband put extra cool whip on the water to make it look extra frothy.

All the girls enjoying their cake and ice cream, and making their silly faces:

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My younger daughter turned 7 yesterday! We had a teeny tiny birthday lunch and party at our house. I got the idea from this post. We sent out invitations in a tiny font along with a plastic magnifying glass so they could read them!

Started out doing a teeny tiny craft – but I didn’t get any pictures of it since I was still in the kitchen frosting the teeny tiny cupcakes! We found these cute little wooden treasure boxes at Michael’s, so they got to paint them however they wanted to. They also had a little shadow box in the lid, so they put an artificial flower inside. After the paint dried, several of them put some stickers on as well. We put all their teeny tiny treats inside the box!

Since most of my daughter’s friends were from her 1st grade class at school, I invited their teacher as a surprise guest. It was extra special to see her since her position was cut and she won’t be back next year. They were so excited to see her!

For lunch we had bagel bite pizzas, PB&J cracker sandwiches, fruit kabobs (on toothpicks), and cinnamon graham goldfish crackers:

For dessert we had teeny tiny cupcakes, mini Oreos, and chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream.

The girls played some teeny tiny games such as mini bowling and mini UNO – the cards are about 1″ x 2″! We also had a contest to see who could blow the smallest bubble with gum.

Here are all the girls in their party hats: