August 15, 2014

Shark Week Party

This review is based strictly on my opinion. Others may have a different opinion or experience with the product listed above. I was provided the sample free of charge by the company or PR agency and I have given my honest opinion. No other type of compensation was received for this review.

Each year my boys (and I) count down the days for Shark Week to start! We love watching each episode all week long, but the highlight of our week is always our Shark Week Party Flick and Float. We have a few friends over, serve some fun shark themed food, splash in the pool, and project Shark Week on the screen (or as in recent years, come in from the rain to watch it on TV)

This year, it was so easy to find Shark Week themed treats! We always have popcorn, and since the kids like to lounge or float in the pool while they snack, I like to serve it in a container that will withstand getting wet. Target Dollar Spot had the perfect Shark Week ziplock baggies and drink bottles for the kiddos. I filled the larger baggies with popcorn, and the smaller ones with gold fish crackers. The drink bottles were great for the party and were fun favors for the kids to take home. Dunkin Donuts has super fun Shark Week inspired donuts, so I had a dozen made for the party and put them on a cake plate. Who doesn’t love a donut? While watching Shark Week earlier this week, we saw commercials for Lush Cosmetics Shark Fin Soap to support the efforts to ban shark finning. Of course we had to get some of those for party favors! Fun favors with a great cause! We found a few other small shark themed trinkets and put them in bags from Michael’s that I embellished with heat transfer vinyl from Expressions Vinyl.

Since the kids spend most of their time playing in the pool, I don’t serve a whole lot of snacks, but I do still love to dress up a dessert table! I was sent some wonderful paint from Modern Masters. My husband and I cut out rustic folk sharks from left over wood scraps and painted them with Modern Masters metallic paint. We made one large one and 3 small ones to use for food labels. I painted the larger one with Modern Masters’ Oyster paint first, and then covered it with Steel Gray when it was still slightly wet. This made the gray a little lighter in color. I used Sapphire for the mouth and eyes. Finally, I added teeth with more of the Oyster paint. I made the three smaller ones the same way, except I chose to make them a dark grey so I could use chalk to write the food names on them. Since we had a large enough scrap of wood, we also cut out a surfboard shape with a shark bite on the side. I spray painted that with Rustoleum paint, and then I used more of the Oyster paint to letter the board. I painted Big Bite Snack Attack with a small paint brush on the board and it looked great hanging over the food table. I am absolutely in love with Modern Masters paint! I used the most gnarly old outdoor grade used up wood and the paint went on like a champ! One little shark lover asked to take the small sharks home for his shark room, he was in love with them!

We served simple snacks; including store bought cupcakes with gummy sharks on them, Dunkin Donuts Shark Week Donuts, jello in push pop containers, popcorn, and gold fish crackers. I put blue juice in the bottles for the kids and made our house special with gummy sharks for the adults. We all had a fabulous time and look forward to next year’s Shark Week.