Sea Food at Lydia's "Three Under the Sea Party"

I always have a lot of fun planning food to fit the theme of a party. I usually start by searching the key words for the party in google images and click on pictures of food that I think looks good.  Most of these ideas did not originate with me, but I am so happy with how they all came together. Above is a shot showing most of the food table.  Below you can see close ups of specific ideas.

For the kids; peanut butter and jellyfish sandwiches!  Here's what I learned about making shaped sandwiches with a cookie cutter.  Make the sandwich first.  Press the cutter through the sandwich, pressing on the whole cutter with your whole hand, so there is equal pressure and a lot of it.  Twist the cutter from side to side so you can be sure everything cuts really nice and crisp.  We started out just pressing down and got torn edges and little detail.  The twist makes the difference.

 I couldn't resist throwing a few pirates into all the mermaid and fish items.  Pirates Booty was too good to pass up, I just wish they made a smaller snack sized package.

 We had to have goldfish, served in a fish tank.

This is my FAVORITE! PJ has now carved a watermelon Mad Hatter's hat, a watermelon pirate ship and now a watermelon shark! I LOVE it and I love that he is so fun and creative! Search watermelon shark on google images and you will see several that all look the same.

No need to reinvent the wheel here, but PJ did add a few new touches, like the giant googly eyes and the sea of blue jello filled with unsuspecting boats. The mouth of the shark is filled with a watermelon fruit salad.
 

 I put Finding Nemo fruit snacks in a smaller fish bowl.

 These apricot clown fish were so cute and not terribly difficult.  I found the full directions here.

 I saw these "pearly bites clam cookies" and knew I HAD to make them for the party.  Full directions here.

 Thank GOD I had 50 free cupcakes coming my way thanks to Cities Cupcakes. The power outages in Knoxville made baking and decorating impossible for me.  Cities Cupcakes actually lost power for a day but managed to get my order ready in time.  We got the Miami cupcake (lemon), the Key West cupcake (key lime), and some vanilla cupcakes.  I asked them to ice them all in blue and then I added sea shaped molded chocolates.  Information on how I made the chocolates can be found here.

I also made a few octopuses out of tootsie pops and gummy worms.  Full directions for the octopus cupcakes can be found here.

I hope Lydia and all of our friends enjoyed the tasting the sea party food as much as I enjoyed planning and making it!