getting over those birthday blues

I've gotta get myself out of the I'm so sad my little baby is turning 2 rut, and it seems like the best way to do that is to throw myself into getting things ready for her birthday party.  I've been working on a few small projects here and there for the past couple of weeks, and it really has helped to make me look forward to this milestone a little bit more.  Because of Natalie's intense love for all things fish! ocean! water! blue! I decided to do an "Under the Sea" theme for her party.  We'll be decorating with lots of blue balloons and streamers, and I've been pinning so many cute fish & nautical & Nemo-themed food & game & decor ideas on Pinterest that I'm starting to wonder how I will ever decide on just a few to actually tackle over the next month or so. 

One of the decorations I've already finished, with help from Natalie, is the aquatic alphabet banner in the picture above.  I printed off a creature or underwater object for each letter of the alphabet, and Natalie helped me color every single one before I glued them down to paper penants that will hang on one of the walls at her party.  It was a pretty fun little project, if I do say so myself.  Natalie can be kind of fickle about coloring--she'll go from loving it intensely to throwing all of her crayons on the floor in a fit of fury and yelling "All done!!!" so it took us several days of coloring sessions to get the banner all complete, but the finished product is awfully sweet.  It's so big that I ended up dividing it up into 4 separate banners, and because I used heavy cardstock paper it was very simple to put a quick hole punch on each side of every piece and string them together with ribbon.  My attempts at cloth penant banners were only on the eh, okay side of the scale, but these little paper ones are a huge improvement.  Such an easy project if you're looking for a cute & quick decoration for a party!


If you're ever looking for things in the ocean that start with each letter of the alphabet, let me warn you that some of the letters are way harder to assign than others.  Seriously.  Here are the ones I came up with:
A:  Anemone // B:  Barracuda // C:  Clownfish // D:  Dolphin // E:  Eel // F:  Flounder // G:  Goldfish // H:  Hammerhead Shark // I:  Iceberg // J:  Jellyfish // K:  Killer Whaler // L:  Lobster // M:  Manatee // N:  Narwhal // O:  Octopus // P:  Piranha // Q:  Quahog // R:  Reef // S:  Stingray // T:  Turtle // U:  Urchin // V:  Viper Squid // W:  Whale // X:  X-Ray Fish // Y:  Yellow Submarine // Z:  Zebra Shark

I'll keep on pushing the 2nd-birthday-sads to the back of my mind by continuing to post updates on what we're getting together to make Natalie's party special.  Stay tuned. :)