We celebrated Avery’s 6th birthday with a mermaid luau birthday party. She and I planned it together- she chose the theme, the decorations, the crafts, the goodie bags and the food.

I found a roll of paper at Michael’s that was “ocean floor.” We found mermaid and fish cutouts for the our party guests to fill our ocean. It turned out pretty cool.

Would you believe we found these “hula girl” sets at the 99 Cents Only Store? It came with an elastic grass skirt, a lei and 2 lei bracelets. I was stoked when I found them.

She came up with the idea to decorate fish bowls and then give each kid a fish to take home. I thought that was do-able and figured it all out. I found the bowls at The Dollar Tree, the paint from Michael’s (with a coupon), the rocks at a garage sale (paid $3 and only used 1/2 of them). Dan bought the fish and spent way more $$ than I would have spent, but it all turned out fine. The kids liked painting the bowls and were really excited to be taking a real fish home.

Avery had a short list of foods she wanted to have at the party- short pretzel sticks, chips and fruit- watermelon and pineapple. She doesn’t even like fruit, but she knows that Sawyer does and her friends do do. I added a veggie platter and salsa for the chips.

I made chicken & veggies shish kabobs. They were pretty easy and fun to make and very tasty too. I made a salad and Dan baked some squash. Pretty simple and yummy. There wasn’t too much leftover. Avery wanted pizza for the kids. So I ordered cheese pizza for them.

For dessert she wanted to make sundaes- chocolate & caramel syrup, mini chocolate chips, M & Ms, butterfinger- lots to choose from. One thing she always loves at the “build your own yogurt” places are the brownies. As a surprise I had brownie bites as a topping too. I used the brownies to stick candles in while we sang. It worked!

She had a great time! She was happy who was there. She said that one friend was missing- Lukas was still in TX. She was happy with her gifts- craft kits, clothes and toys. Avery really took ownership of this party, she planned a lot of it, I just made it happen.