For my son's 1st birthday, I decided to have a beach theme because we live right on the coast of Georgia but also because of the hot summers we have here.  I hand delivered invitations to partygoers in the form of a message in a bottle. Each bottle was stuffed with the invitation, sand, and a few shells.  Since we live on a coastal island outside of Savannah, the invitations stated "Help I'm stranded on this island called Talahi!".  They also contained the rest of the invitation information in the form of a poem.  The children ranged in various ages so I set up some craft tables for them to make sand art items. They each received a babyfood jar and were allowed to choose their own choice of colored sand to fill them.  They also got to make a sun visor out of fun foam. I precut the visor pieces and they got to use various foam sea creatures and fabric paint to decorate them with.  The back of the visors were held together with one of those corkscrew shoelaces.  The children also were able to make an edible ocean out of blueberry Jell-O and sea creature fruit snacks in a clear plastic cup. Finally, they also made a small sea in a plastic bottle using cooking oil, water, and blue food coloring.  For food, I made hotdogs in the shape of an octopus.  By cutting the hotdogs 3/4 of the way up for the legs and cooking them in boiling water causes the "legs" to curl up like and octopus. The kids then got to decide what color dye their octopus would spray-red (ketchup) or yellow (mustard). They also got to have rice krispy treats in the shape of fish. I made my son's cake was to look like the Rainbow Fish and had little small shell shaped cupcakes around it as it was served. The kids got to play in the sprinklers outside while the adults got to play volleyball and have a local favorite called low country boil.  It's a mix of boiled potatoes, sausage, corn on the cob, onions, mushrooms, garlic cloves, combined with seasonings.  Towards the end of the party we let the children break open a fish pinata and everyone took home their treasures in a beach pail with their name on it.  Fun was had by all!!