Mr. Dylan Turned 8 (A Shark Birthday)

I can hardly believe that my first born just turned 8. We celebrated this sweet, caring, funny boy by throwing him an awesome shark party. He is so interested in learning facts and figures about the ferocious, blood-sniffing mammals. We had fun coming up with sharky details and doing a little learning while we were at it.

His big party was mainly family but I still wanted to have a game in case the weather was nice (which it was, t-shirts and sunshine!). To make a totally free and fun game I duct taped a velcro catch mitt to a 13 gallon tub lid. Then I duct taped brown thin cardboard - the extra they put inside a roll of wrapping paper I had saved and finally found a use for - to the plastic lid and spray painted it sliver. I drew eyes and gills with a sharpie and cut out the mouth over where the velcro mitt was. After painting white teeth I taped to a box for stability. I also drew fish on the ball for a little more effect. Now we have a backyard game for the summer months to come too!

Shark fin cupcakes. Dylan always likes to bring fun cup cakes in to his classroom so to go along with the shark party I made chocolate cake with blue wrappers, frosted with white and blue frosting and topped with glazed sugar cookies. I used a heart shaped cookie cutter and just basically cut the tops off to get the right shape.

"What is your favorite type of shark?" Dylan asked everyone to graph their favorite type of shark. There was a tie between hammer head and great white.

Shark (Jaws) cake. Sugar cookie lettering above and body with thin mint eyes and blue berry nose. My inspiration came from this post on Pinterest. Nothing like it but a close second.

Pizza, shark word searches and the shark cake.

Frugal decor, I used my own printer and didn't have any colored ink, so black and white works just fine. Painters tape also makes a fun band on the water bottles.