I'm sorry it's been so long! School has been hectic and there just hasn't been much time for blogging (especially since I'm still having the occasional Disney dinner night), but I am in the midst of a four day ice break from school/work, so it's time for a Finding Nemo party!
Since there is more than one Disney movie that takes place under the sea, I didn't want to go with too much of an underwater/sea creature theme. Instead, I decided to go with an Australian theme because, well, it's in Australia.
- some people celebrate Australia Day (January 26)
- in order to throw a true Australian themed party you need to have Vegemite, Tim Tams, Anzac biscuits, Peach Melba and Lamington
- both Vegemite and Tim Tams are next to impossible to make
- both Vegemite and Tim Tams take a while to ship
The meat potato pies were basically just stuffed potatoes, but they were quite delicious. There were also a few spices in them that I wouldn't normally put in that sort of dish (nutmeg and cinnamon), but everyone seemed to like them. I felt like shrimp on the barbie, though cliché, was something that we had to have. Once again, there were a lot of flavors I wouldn't have thought to use here, but the shrimp were also delicious. Since the meat potato pies didn't require much of the potato filling, I made mashed potatoes rather than waste the potato, but it was more of a last minute addition than a planned thing.
As I've mentioned previously, when I do these parties, I do them gluten free. So, I took this Anzac biscuit recipe and replaced the regular flour with our gluten free flour mix. I also didn't have rolled oats, so I used steel cut oats instead. Both substitutions equaled super crunchy Anzac sheets rather than biscuits. They still tasted quite good, but I really want to try them again following the actual recipe to see what they're supposed to be like.
Our dessert spread was quite impressive. The most impressive, by far, was the watermelon shark. This shark was done in honor of Bruce.
So, for dessert we had a watermelon shark, Peach Melba, and a Tim Tam cake. That site with the watermelon shark has fantastic step-by-step instructions on making a watermelon shark, and although I wouldn't go so far as to say it was easy, it wasn't that hard. Definitely worth the trouble for the reaction of the Bean. Peach Melba is pretty basic and the combination is quite delicious. As far as the Tim Tam cake goes, Tim Tam are crunchy chocolate cookies with a soft chocolatey middle that are then dipped in chocolate, from what I understand, so this cake was supposed to look like a Tim Tam and even taste like one minus the crunch. The recipe actually mentions getting some Tim Tams and crumbling them on or into one of the layers, but since I was trying to avoid having to get real Tim Tams, I skipped that step.
As it turns out, there isn't really a lot of notable music in Finding Nemo, but there are some instrumental pieces that will set the mood if you would like to have music while eating.
I had a difficult time finding ideas for games online, so I made my own game called Finding Nemo! First, I painted a bunch of clown fish on some card stock, and then cut them out. But only one of the fish was Nemo with his gimpy fin (the rest were based on Marlin).
Can you tell which one is Nemo?
Then, I sent the family out of the room, put a piece of tape on each fish, taped the fish to the bottom of some chairs, and set the chairs up like you would for musical chairs. Unlike musical chairs, everyone playing had a chair. So, when the music stopped, everyone sat down, checked the fish, and the person that found Nemo won! The Bean and her BFF loved this game, so we had to play it again and again. Each time I would just make them leave the room and rearrange the fish. This is about the fifth time we played:
For our craft, we decided to make our own Squishy!
We ended up using bottles of Hubert's lemonade because we thought the bottles were pretty, but I would recommend a bigger bottle so your Squishy has more space to swim. The Bean got a little aggravated with the cutting of the plastic bag (it was kind of tedious), but in the end she loved her Squishy and thought it was very cool.
Well, I suppose that sums up our adventures in Australia, and we'll see you again next time for a trip to Cherry Tree Lane!
Godspeed!
