Your guests are sure to be swimming in fun if you choose our Little Mermaid party jumper and host an under-the-sea party. Follow our party planning suggestions below and make a real splash with your bash!

Invitations - Purchase invitations at your local party supply store, or use our free DYI Appian personalized invitation script! These feature the jump you rent (links are available at each jump page) and can be printed or saved for emailing.

If you'd rather create your own unique invitations, consider hand-delivering a message in a bottle to each guest! Write your party details on a parchment paper, roll into a scroll and tie with ribbon. Next, collect empty water bottles with lids, wash thoroughly and remove the outer brand wrapping. Insert scrolls into the water bottles and, if you choose, fill with very dry sand or fish-shaped confetti. Decorate the outside of the bottles with more ribbon and stickers or clipart. (See our Links section at the bottom of the page for stickers and clipart resources.)

Decorations - Create an inside underwater atmosphere by hanging blue, green or silver streamers or curling ribbon from the ceiling, or attach them to free-floating helium-filled blue and green balloons. For a fun extra oceanic touch, hand draw or print out fish clipart and attach to the bottoms of the ribbon or steamers, and tape some to your walls. You'll literally have fish swimming throughout the party area!

Also consider draping fishnets purchased from a sporting supply store in a corner or two and affixing plastic fish and sea shells. If you really want to wow your guests and truly transport them under the sea, consider renting an Appian bubble machine. Imagine how magical this will all seem to the youngsters at your party!

See our Links section below to purchase Little Mermaid and "under the sea" tableware, or shop locally. If you do not want to go to great expense, plain blue and green tablecloths and flatware can be found in any party store!

Arrival Activities/Icebreakers - Purchase a Little Mermaid Happy Birthday banner (see Links below) and hang on a wall or drape over a table. Have arriving guests sign their birthday greetings to the guest of honor with a magic marker on the banner.

Party Activities - Your party guests will spend much of their time bouncing around in our Little Mermaid jumper, but you may want to have a few other activities planned to add to the fun!

Fill a baby pool or other large container with dry sand, or use your sandbox, and hide a number of pieces of costume jewelry in the sand. Instruct each guest to find one "secret treasure." To make it interesting, blindfold the guests!

Hold a water balloon toss! Fill the balloons with water an hour or two before the party and store in a cool place. Pair kids up and see which pair can toss their balloon the most times without it breaking.

Next, divide guests into two teams and have a water race! You will need four buckets of equal size (two filled with water and two empty) and two identical soup ladles. Set the two empty buckets several yards away from the two full buckets. The object of the game is for each team to use the soup ladles and fill the empty buckets with water from the full buckets. Team members go one at a time, running with the ladle to the empty bucket, pouring the water in, then running back to the full bucket, handing off the ladle to the next team member. Once everyone has gone a turn, measure the water in the buckets to see which team filled their bucket with the most water and the least spilling!

A mermaid race, similar to a potato sack race, is mandatory! Turn the guests into mermaids by wrapping their legs in green crepe paper or green scrap fabric, or have them step into garbage bags and hop toward the finish line. The first mermaid to cross the line wins! This activity provides a great photo opportunity -- enclose guests' photos with thank-you notes later.

For a neat craft project, have older children make their own underwater scene in a glass or plastic bottle with caps -- baby food jars would be ideal. You'll need: vegetable oil, glitter or confetti, blue or green food coloring, stickers or small Little Mermaid clipart images (see our Links section below) and rubber cement. Have children fill their small containers halfway with water. Add one or two drops of food coloring, cap the bottle and shake to mix. Next, fill the rest of the container with the vegetable oil. Note how it sits on top of the water! Drop confetti, glitter and Little Mermaid images into the liquid, cap the bottle and seal the caps with rubber cement. When the rubber cement has dried, instruct guests to gently shake or roll the containers on their sides -- the mixing oil and water creates waves!

Food and Beverage - Not all kids find fish palatable, but if you think your guests will, serve fish sticks and tartar sauce. Or, if you can find a fish-shaped cookie cutter, make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and serve in fish-shaped sections.

Consider submarine sandwiches! Provide trays of sub buns, an assortment of meats and cheeses, lettuce and tomato, condiments, and let children build their own.

Fill a glass fishbowl with a snack mix of Goldfish brand snack crackers and pretzels. Decorate with blue ribbon and use as your table centerpiece.

You'll definitely want to serve an "ocean punch" with your food! This can be as simply accomplished as choosing a blue, berry-flavored unsweetened drink mix like Kool-Aid or adding a touch of blue food coloring to any lemon-lime soft drink. Or, try our super sea-worthy recipe for "Ocean Punch" as follows:

Ingredients:
1 .22 oz packet of Berry Blue Kool-Aid unsweetened drink mix
1 cup sugar
1 2-liter bottle of 7Up or other lemon-lime soda
gummy fish candies
vanilla frozen yogurt

The night before your party, prepare Kool-Aid as directed with one cup of sugar. In a standard ice tray, place one gummy fish candy in each ice cube square and fill the tray with Kool-Aid. Freeze overnight and refrigerate the rest of your Kool-Aid.

Just prior to serving your punch, place 4 standard scoops of vanilla frozen yogurt in your blender. Fill blender halfway with the Kool-Aid reserved from the night before and blend. Add 7Up to fill the blender and blend again. Repeat until you have used all the Kool-Aid and 7Up. Your punch will be a lovely sea-blue complete with calm foamy whitecaps! Pour into punch bowl over the ice cubes you prepared the night before and serve. Stir occasionally and add ice as needed to keep punch chilled -- you may wish to make an entirely separate batch of Kool-Aid just for ice-making to avoid diluting your punch but it is not necessary. Enjoy!

Music -
The Little Mermaid, Original Soundtrack, Disney (1991).
Disney's Princess Favorites, Various Artists, Disney (2002).
Disney Princess Tea Party, Various Artists, Disney, (2005).

Little Mermaid Party Links -
Find links to Little Mermaid and other sea creatures clipart images for decorations and invitations at http://www.cartooncritters.com/clipartlinks.htm.

Visit the official Disney Princess web site at http://disney.go.com/princess/html/main_iframe.html to order a birthday greeting for the birthday girl from Ariel! You can also visit Ariel's "magical world" on this site, choose "activities," and print coloring pages and templates for bookmarks and door hangers.

Search the "under the sea" selections at http://shindigz.com for decorations, paper goods and very reasonably price party favor packs.

Find more Little Mermaid paper goods, party favors, sticker sheets and a banner on which arriving guests can write their birthday greetings at http://www.partyperfection.com/little-mermaid-party.html. There are great prize ideas at this web site!