Pink Beach Party Ideas – DIY Gingerbread Sandcastle

Looking for a fun DIY Beach Party decoration? Look no further! Ashley’s pink beach birthday party would not have been complete without a sandcastle. The trick was finding a way to create one with no sand. 😉 When I was dreaming up ideas for this party and the activities I would have the kids do, I thought it might be fun to have them each make their own sandcastle, gingerbread house style. 

I figured they could they could cover their gingerbread structure made with graham crackers and ice cream cones in icing and then coat it in brown sugar to look like sand and finish it off with candy. I decided to create a larger scale Gingerbread Sandcastle as the centerpiece for our food and dessert table. Here’s how to make your own.

pink beach party ideas

I started with a cardboard cake round, and then built my castle out of graham crackers, cake ice cream cones, and sugar cones….just like I was making a gingerbread house, but here’s the secret…you HOT GLUE the pieces together. It is SO much faster than using icing, and helps everything stay together SO much better!

pink beach party ideas

Once I had the look that I wanted, I made up some royal icing and coated the castle in it section by section adding brown sugar right after the icing. You have to work in sections, otherwise the icing will harden before you get to the sugar. I carved out little parts on the castle using a plastic butter knife, just like I would have with real sand, and molded it just like I wanted. By the time it sat over night, it was very hard and ready to use.

PINK BEACH PARTY IDEAS : FOOD

When it comes to planning food for parties I’m a little obsessed with color coordinating everything. If it doesn’t look right, I’ll re-wrap it and package it so it does. 🙂 Our menu consisted of Beach Ball Cake pops from Sugar Parlour, which were FABULOUS!I found these cute pails in matching colors at a local floral supply store and added floral foam and kraft colored shredded tissue. I was then able to stick the cake pop sticks into the floral foam to get them to stand up.

I made these white chocolate shells with a simple mold I found on Amazon and white chocolate candy melts. It literally takes minutes to make them, and they look so cute on a bed of brown sugar.

Custom cookies are always a nice touch because you can get them to match any theme and color scheme. The glittery starfish sugar cookies were the creations of The Pastry Tart Bakery…absolutely DIVINE…melt in your mouth sugary goodness.

I also ordered simple ham and turkey footlong “sand”wiches from Subway, cut them in quarters on the diagonal, and wrapped them in mini kraft colored bags and tied them up with pink and white baker’s twine. 

The chip bags didn’t quite fit the look I was going for, so I individually packaged the girls chips in ziploc bags and then put those ziploc bags into mini burlap drawstring bags to keep with the pink beach party theme. 

Pink lemonade in cute jars and assorted candy in the colors of the day completed the menu.

PINK BEACH PARTY IDEAS : GAMES AND ACTIVITIES

 

Like I said earlier, I made each girl their own sandcastle gingerbread house, so we spent a bunch of time decorating those. They were SO cute and it was fun to see how unique they all were. We also made leis…

played limbo…(the stick is simply a piece of PVC pipe wrapped in pink ribbon…you KNOW it had to be pink!) 😉

 

we also had a “hula” hoop contest, opened presents and had cake. The party that I had planned to last an hour and a half went on for almost 3 hours…especially once the adults started getting in on the limbo game! 😉

The cake was a simple two tier white cake that I had Albertsons make. I then spread brown sugar around the bottom of each tier to look like sand, and put pink sand dollars that I made out of candy melts (found the mold on amazon.com for about $5) around the edges to make it look fun.

There were lots of other touches…handmade runners, handmade three tier ruffled white tablecloth, etc. but that should give you the basics so you can re-create your own! 🙂 If you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask!! 🙂

Have a great day!
tammy

Tammy

Creative Director at Pink Peppermint Design
Tammy Mitchell is the founder and creative director of lifestyle blog pinkpeppermintdesign.com. Along with being a homeschooling mom of two kiddos, she is also an in-demand prop and event stylist, photographer, interior and graphic designer. On Pink Peppermint Design, she shares creative DIY projects, easy entertaining and gift ideas, inspiring interiors and events. She lives in Southern California, with her husband and two children.

pink beach party ideas

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