Katie invited five friends, and they were asked to come in bathing suits - over warmer clothes (this is early April in central PA, after all). The first activity was to make their own mermaid tails. I got this idea from a library book on the Coney Island Mermaid parade, actually. 
I cut out green poster board tails, and the girls spent nearly an hour decorating them. Stickers, flower pieces (taken from the floor of craft shops by my daughter), shiny and sparkly fabric from Aunt Jen, fun paper, you name it. They had a ball! I took a picture of each girl with her tail when it was done, and then they all posed in front of our crepe paper "waterfall".
The second activity was to dig for buried treasure. I filled Katie's turtle sandbox with shredded brown paper "sand", and we buried gold chocolate coins, chocolate fish, iridescent bead necklace "kits", and the rest of the 200 beads from the package. They dug with the shovels that came with their pails - what they got instead of goody bags.Then they used up some excited energy with a freeze dance to Little Mermaid music. We printed out pictures of fish, jellyfish, and mermaids, and Katie made up moves or sayings that they had to say or do when they landed on one of the pictures. It was very funny. I didn't get any pictures of this -- too much movement to make a clear shot!
We ended with dinner: shells and cheese, octopus hot dogs (did you know you can even find *videos* of this on the web?), fruit salad, blue jello aquaria (with mandarin orange goldfish), and the cake.After present opening, the girls who could stay ran around the house and did more dressing up. They all had a blast, which was even more gratifying for me since Katie's friends didn't all know each other before the party. Neither did all the parents, but we all had fun, too!
Needless to say, we're still cleaning up "sand" and beads... but it was worth it for our five-year-old mermaid!
