Aurelia’s Underwater Adventure Party

Working with a water theme was perfect for me, I loved creating all the watercolour corals and sea life taking advantage of the natural water effects of this medium to create the custom designed invitations. Aurelia loves the colour pink so we made the coral tones very pink and the jellyfish and turtle also got a touch of sparkly pink. Turquoise was chosen as the other main colour for this party to reflect the water theme.

Aurelia’s third birthday was celebrated with an underwater theme featuring pretty corals, shimmering water and abundant sea life. Her love of adventure and the Octonauts was also woven into the design of the day.

We set the long table up with a backdrop of shimmery streamers to make the space feel like we were underwater amidst the corals and fish.

This was a fun theme to work with, pulling out all my beautiful bowls and platters and fabric lengths. Shells, seaweed and coral come in a variety of interesting textures and patterns to inspire styling and design choices.

Aurelia’s toy collection included a number of fluffy sea animals and little crabs to sprinkle in amongst the decorations and for the party guests to play with.

We also bought two beautiful big balloons - a whale and a seahorse from Ruby Rabbit Partyware which made a wonderful addition to the setting.

Aurelia also loved playing with these balloons waiting for the party to start and for days afterwards dragging them round the house and singing.

When Aurelia woke up on the morning of the party she was excited to see so many pretty elements coming together. Marshmallows shaped like corals from the Marshmallow Club and an array of flowers. Choosing flowers for this theme was lots of fun, picking out formations that resembled clusters of anemones or sprays of seaweed.

In honour of her love of Octonauts I made a number of Octonauts cake toppers featuring the different characters from the story. We added them on top of some savoury spinach and cheese muffins, a nod to the popular seaweed biscuits and cakes made by the kitchen team led by the vegemals. We also made our family favourites of onigiri riceballs, filled with hot smoked salmon and flecked with seaweed seasoning.

I made an array of shells, fish and starfish for my signature style gingerbread cookies with a light lemon icing painted in watercolour style.

As gifts for the party guests we made beaded bracelets with pretty glass fish beads, miniature shells, pearly bits and glass beads that evoked the oceans colours.

Other savoury dishes served included seafood marinara and a salmon mousse shaped in a trout mould. We made jelly cups and a seaweed green guacamole.

For Aurelia’s cake I worked on making lots of sugar flower corals, delicately colouring them in with petal powder to make it very pretty. I baked a chocolate cake with chocolate cream mousse… it looked stunning until….

…Until I over did the buttercream icing work and decorating, oblivious to the fact that everything was kind of melting as I spent hours lovingly trying to create an ombré buttercream effect to place my coral reef against.

The whole thing collapsed on me, I literally had to catch half the cake before it slid off the bench, and I had to throw everything into the fridge and come back to it in the middle of the night to piece everything back together again.

I managed to piece something back together again for the day itself which was a relief

… and the chocolate cake was still delicious and very light and fluffy… the fluffiness was part of the problem decoration wise but at least tummy wise it was superb…

One of the party games we played was a treasure hunt in our back garden. In line with the Octonauts theme I designed a treasure map inspired by places in the Octonauts stories with corresponding places on the map. Individual clues sent people to different spots on the map to then find the next clue before ultimately finding the treasure. As our guests were all ages between 3 and 15 this was a great game that everyone could enjoy.

This was such a pretty and fun theme to design a party for my daughter and I loved how magical and shimmery everything turned out. Our guests were truly transported to a magical underwater world.