Under the Sea Party Ideas : The Narwhal Party

This past week I had the pleasure of celebrating the birthday of a very special girl.  As went about planning this party, I wrestled with the idea of whether or not to share it here.  You know I love to share all the things I am up to, in hopes that I can inspire some fun ideas, but this party was near and dear to my heart.  You may remember my dear friend Jaime, who passed away at the end of April after a long battle with cancer.  Jaime was sunshine and rainbows and all things crafty and fun.  And Jaime loved to share everything on social media and her blog, so I decided that if I was being true to who Jaime was, I would share this party here too. Several years ago when Jaime was first diagnosed I was looking for a way to serve her and help lighten her load as she was going through some rough chemo treatments.  Her cute 5 year old, soon to be 6 year old daughter was celebrating a birthday. Knowing Jaime and her love for parties, I knew that I needed to step in and plan something special for her so that her cute girl could still have just the kind of special party her mom would throw her if she was feeling up to it.  The Mermaid Party, what has become one of the most popular posts here on the blog, was the result of a collaboration between Jaime, Kelsey and I as I took her vision and brought it to life.  This post contains affiliate links.

When Jaime passed away just 8 weeks before Kelsey’s birthday, I immediately knew that I wanted to create another party for her to hopefully, ease a little of the pain of mom not being around.  I often feel like what I do is superficial and not very important in the grand scheme of things, but being able to do things like this, makes me feel like I can make a difference and that makes me feel good. Years later, Kelsey still loves all things Under the Sea.  This time she issued a real challenge though with her wishes for a Narwhal party.  Traveling to CA to create this party tested my abilities a bit, not having my entire crafting arsenal and all of my photo equipment at my fingertips, my talented baker friend Shana no longer living in the area and my favorite florist was out of town…but thanks to my dear friend Mandi, her super helpful girls and my sweet Ashley, we made it happen and I think it was a hit.  

UNDER THE SEA PARTY IDEAS

I started the search for Under the Sea party ideas and Narwhal party ideas online, and I have to admit…there wasn’t much out there!  I pulled some inspiration from unicorn parties, since Narwhals are considered the unicorns of the sea, and did my best to steer clear of the same color scheme we had used for the Mermaid Party…even though all the inspiration I saw was in those same colors.  Kelsey asked for light blue as one of the colors, fish crackers, grapes, and a white cake with chocolate frosting…so those were key elements to the party table.  

NARWHAL CAKE AND CUPCAKES

So, let’s get this out of there first and foremost…I am NOT a baker. lol!!  Well, at least not a professional cake decorator.  I can make some mean desserts, but fondant…WHOA!  That is a whole other level!  There were really NO Narwhal party decorations anywhere…and I looked…Target, Walmart, Amazon, Hobby Lobby, Party City, Michaels…you name it, I looked.  So I knew that the Narwhal piece of the decor was going to have to be handmade.  A cake is always the centerpiece of the food table and a great way to bring in the theme, so Ash and I tried our hand at a Narwhal cake.  for having never worked with fondant before I think we did alright…as long as you don’t look at the back. 😉 I ordered this unicorn cake decorating kit so that I could use the eyes and horn for our narwhal cake.  I also ordered pre-made fondant to make our lives easier and it was GREAT!!  This is what I ordered. 

With little kids I know not everyone like chocolate frosting (which was what the cake was made of) and we were having a HUGE party…35+ kids…so we made cupcakes to go with the cake that had vanilla buttercream.  I tried my hand at swirled frosting with the help of this coupler and these bags it was SUPER easy.  I used this food coloring to get the brightest pink and turquoise possible. 

I bought these unicorn horns and cut off the ears to make them Narwhal cupcake toppers.  These cute cupcake cups were so shimmery and fun.  They make great under the sea party decorations.  

NARWHAL PARTY DECORATIONS

Once I decided on the color scheme for this under the sea Narwhal party, I bought these paper fans in pink and turquoise to make a backdrop.  Paper fans are one of my go-to decorations because they just look SO fun!  I hot glue them to a big foam board and they make an easy backdrop.  

UNDER THE SEA NARWHAL PARTY FOOD

How cute are these grape kabobs?  I saw this idea on Pinterest for these adorable seaweed sticks. They are SO easy and I think they were an awesome way to add height to the table as well as a nutritious snack.  All you need are bamboo sticks and grapes to make these cute treats.  

Fish crackers in baking cups are an easy under the sea themed grab and go snack.  Pink and blue salt water taffy is a fun way to add color to a dessert table and it’s not very expensive. I liked these cute twisty suckers in pink and blue.  They look kind of like narwhal horns to me.  Pre-made cookies with pink frosting and sprinkles on a bed of brown sugar are always a favorite and look fun. 

Again to go along with the under the sea theme, I used some easy melting chocolate and these starfish and shell molds to make some 5 minute starfish and shells.

NARWHAL PARTY GAMES

I failed to take any pictures of the Narwhal party games, (oops!) but we had a narwhal party ring toss.  Simple orange cones spray painted gold like narwhal horns and some rings for ring toss were a quick and easy themed game to put together.

Another fun activity for the party was a Narwhal drawing class.  A cute teenager came to teach the party guests how to draw a narwhal.  We had coloring pages and crayons around on tables too for the girls to color pre-printed narwhal pictures. 

UNDER THE SEA NARWHAL PARTY FAVORS

To add another narwhal party decoration element to the party, we handmade these narwhal party bags.  We put one at each place setting so every girl had a bag to grab when it came time for the pinata.  I hand cut the horns from glitter paper and the fins from cardstock.  We added a bit of glitter around the horn and the eye stickers. 

This was such a special party and so much fun for me to put together.  I think the birthday girl had a great time and I really do know that Jaime had a total hand in making sure that everything went off without a hitch. 

I hope that you are able to take some under the sea party ideas from this Narwhal party and use them to create something fun.  

You can check out my entire party gallery here and all of my DIY party ideas here. Here are some of our most popular parties…

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Happy entertaining!

Tammy