Ocean party for a 5-year-old Flop

I'd say Faith-y's birthday party this year was quite a success.

It was a LOT of fun! Of course, half the fun is preparing for the party and having them help with the decorations. Girlies made the 'ocean in a bottle' craft a couple of nights beforehand, and they had so much fun with it:

Girlies helped hang the ocean decorations the night before:

Maddie and Faith "painted" some ocean pictures outside with wet sidewalk chalks. They just love doing that, even though I don't necessarily wet the chalks on purpose, but rather forget to bring them in during the torrential downpours;)

A new birthday tradition aside from the birthday videos that has started is a pillowcase dress that I order for the birthday girl. Abrielle had a Bambi pillowcase dress for her Thumper party this past spring, and I secretly ordered Faith an Ariel pillowcase dress for her ocean party. It was supposed to be kept secret until her birthday, but I couldn't help but show her the day before when it arrived in the mail. She absolutely loved it, and I thought she looked adorable:

Faith herself engineered the entire menu for her big day. She was so cute and said she wanted pizza again (a 2nd straight year for this pizza fiend), and "seaweed (spinach dip), clams (clam cookies), and ocean cups (blue jello with Swedish fish)." I somehow managed a small fish cake too:

Faith had so much fun at her party! Tia Rosa got her some adorable outfits and the sweet ocean book that she always checks out of the library. Cousins, aunt Lisi, and Uncle Nate got her some awesome life-size Rapunzel and Ariel paper dolls with outfits and accessories that you can color. Perfectly right up Faith's alley. AND, fairy underpants and a Rosetta doll! She was in heaven. Cousins all made a seashell 'fossil' with air-dry clay and the hit was an ocean trivia game that played like a game of Jeopardy. The weather fortunately was BEAUTIFUL on Friday, so we all walked down to the duck pond and spent a good while playing at the playground and walking around the pond.

It was a perfect day!