Each year, my son has a different theme for his birthday party. He decides on the theme (usually months in advance), we work on his invite list and he even sketches his cake design for me! This year was sooooo much fun! We had a tropical beach party theme! We had water games, treasure hunts, singing PPAP (yes, that's a thing) and, of course, lots of baked goodies! Keep reading for some tropical beach party ideas!
The invitation sets the entire mood for the party! I tried to avoid too many bright colours and stuck with tropical tones of watermelon, blues and greens. It was soooo hard coming up with a design for a boy! Every where I looked for inspo I saw pretty flamingos and flowers and all things girlie! But I think this design did the trick and my little boy loved it!
The decorations were too much fun! You can't go wrong with helium balloons! I had them scattered all over the place - front entrance, food and dessert table and all over the back yard. As my son always said 'it's not a party without balloons!'
I also made some cut out pineapples which I stuck in the ground. They took FOREVER to cut out! I stuck little treats on the back of some of them and I used them to play a couple of games.
I also bought a dozen pineapples and scattered them all over the place! You can't go troppo without a pineapple! At the end of the party I gave them away to each family - they were very much appreciated!
I also had too much fun shopping at K-Mart for super cute decorations - the wooden letters, a light up '9', funky coasters and cute table cloth, drinks jug and so on! Don't underestimate how much fun you can have in K-Mart! And all these goodies were not expensive so they won't break the bank!
The food was super easy. It may not come as a surprise to learn that 9 year old boys just want to jump in the pool and are not very interested in eating! I made some banana and mango smoothies, bought some hawaiian pizzas and filled up the water jug with water and fresh lemons. They really don't need much more than that!
The games were a mixture of water games and non-water games to cater for every child. I made these super cute mini cookies and sealed them in cello bags. I hid them around the backyard and we had a treasure hunt. You can find these cookie cutters from the lovely people at the Cookie Cutter Shop! And if you are looking for the perfect sugar cookie recipe then grab mine from here!
We used the balloons in the pool for a pool busting competition! The children were broken up into 2 teams and the team that grabbed and busted the most balloons won a prize. It was mayhem! I have never seen such fun and madness in a group of kids! At the end of the party I handed the kids a basket of water balloons and they started throwing them at each other and me!!! #toomuchfun
Did someone say BINGO? I created these super cute bingo cards to match the party theme and we played a few rounds of tropical beach bingo! You can grab this template here!
I created these pineapple masks and hid them around the garden. Each child grabbed a mask and we sang the PPAP song as loud as possible! It was hilarious! If you have not heard of the PPAP song you need to see this!
The desserts! I had a mixture of desserts. The cakes were chocolate. My son had 3 cakes (spoit much?) designed to match the invitation and overall theme. The main cake was the beach themed invitation re-created onto fondant by hand-painting. All other cakes were hand-painted too. It's really nerve racking painting directly onto a cake! Yikes!
We also had Tim Tam truffles, red velvet cupcakes, mini meringues and vanilla cookies! On the healthy side, I cut up some watermelon and placed each slice on paddle pop sticks! They went down a treat!
The party favours were cookies. I packed them in these super cute treat bags I designed to match the theme!
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