How to hold an Octonauts Birthday Party

My children are both obsessed with Octonauts; it’s very funny to hear a 2 year old say “Octonauts, to your stations”. So when it came round to their joint birthday party (their birthdays are only a few days apart) there was one very obvious theme.

The party was much like any other child’s party, there were balloons, cake and pass-the-parcel. It was just all very underwatery.

Invites

I found a picture of the Octonauts online, then used phrases like “flappity-flippers you are invited to a party” and “shiver-me whiskers its at 3 o’clock” to print out my own invites

Decorations

We are very lucky to have a neighbour who has a sister who lives in Sweden, why, well they have an annual crayfish festival, so I was able to borrow lobster shaped fairy lights and paper streamers. Most people won’t have access to such unusual decorations, but it is easy to make crepe paper seaweed and blow up some blue balloons.

Craft

To enable the children to have a bit of a time out from all the excitement and running around I set up a craft table. We made Octonaut hats and paper plate fish. The hats were pre-cut; so all they had to do was glue on the logo I’d printed and get a grownup to staple the strap on to make it the right size. To make the fish I bought small paper plates in a variety of colours and cut a wedge out of each. The cut where the wedge was makes the mouth and gluing the wedge to the back makes the tail. I then let them go made with stickers and “scales” cut from metallic wrapping paper and glue.

Pass-the-parcel

Rather than putting sweets in every layer before the Octonauts themed prize everyone got a pirate eye-patch, so they could be just like Kwazii. Make sure you’ve got a few spare in case any break.

Food

I found I could go to town on fish themed food; there were so many ideas I found on pinterest I couldn’t make them all. I made each child a party box for their food because we didn’t have enough room for them all to sit around the table so we had an indoor picnic. I bought plain white boxes and then made the Octonauts medical logo to stick on each. This gave each child his own version of Peso’s medical bag. If you want a PDF of the logo that I made click here.

Apart from all the usual party food I made “fish biscuits” (just like the vegimals do) by cutting out my Nanna’s cheese straw recipe with a fish shaped cutter. 

I also made clam biscuits, an idea I got from greygreydesigns, I put pink icing on one ginger biscuit, placed a mini marshmallow in the middle and another ginger biscuit on top of that, sticking it with the icing. The eyes are Wilton Candy eyeballs, which I bought online as they don’t seem to be widely available in the UK.

It wouldn’t be a children’s party without jelly and this one didn’t escape the fish treatment. I found this idea on the Martha Stewart website. All you do is cut slits into a set jelly and slide the fish inside. I had to buy the blue Jell-O from an importer of American food on EBay because no UK company makes blue jelly. If you can’t get blue then the Martha Stewart website tells you how to make it from gelatin.

Cake

I went with the GUP-A in the end (after toying very briefly with how I might make an Octopod). I’m only learning how to ice cakes, so the GUP itself is a bit rubbish – but I’m really pleased with the figures. These were moulded from pre-coloured regal icing, and it was a lot like making models from plasticine, only a bit stickier. If you are anti cake making, I would buy a plain cake and then have a go at modelling the characters in icing to go on top, as this bit wasn’t too hard.

Sound the Octoalert - Octonaut mothers – to the kitchen!


UPDATE: Octonaut fans might want to visit this page - my Octonaut Hama Bead designs