The Little Mermaid Movie Date And Starfish Rice Krispie Treats

As the first week of school approaches, I find myself trying to soak in every last moment of summer vacation with the kids.  I fill the last few days of our summer together with fun activities and things that focus on being together as a family.  One of the activities on our summer fun list was for each child to pick a movie to watch and then I would plan a little themed dinner date to go with it.  This was a great way for us to have a quiet little family day and make it extra fun for the kids.  My daughter decided on a Little Mermaid themed movie date and it couldn’t have been more exciting for her.  Complete with the cutest little starfish rice krispie dessert, it was the perfect way to celebrate the last days of summer together.

I was so excited when my daughter chose to borrow the Little mermaid from the Library for her special movie date!  It is one of my favorite classic Disney movies, and I knew I could come up with some really easy and fun ways to create a themed lunch to go with it!  We decided on a lunch date instead of dinner so I really wanted to keep things simple.  I needed to come up with a few fun ideas that didn’t take up too much time to put together.

First we decided on a few themed daytime activities:

We went swimming and practiced our mermaid moves

We played in the sand with some new sand toys

We blew ocean bubbles by the water

We ate our meal with a “dingelhopper”

and then we finished off the day by watching The Little mermaid

 By making a quick print out of the days activities… I got the kids really excited about our themed Little Mermaid movie date.

We decided on a menu together as a family.  My daughter requested peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwiches, so we made up a few sammies, cut them into stars and slapped some of my favorite Wilton googly eye candies on the top.

The entire menu consisted of:

Starfish Sammies

Seaweed Vegetables (peas)

2 kinds of fish crackers (goldfish pretzels and puffs)

Ocean water drinks (blue kool-aid)

and starfish rice krispie treats for dessert

 The starfish desserts were most definitely the star of the show, and the kids squealed with delight upon setting eyes on the finished treats!  These were inspired by an image on Pinterest from  Hungry Happenings where she shares how to make some really darling smores starfish.  Upon reading the post, I realized that they might be far too much work for a  simple movie date with the kids.  So… I improvised using her image as my inspiration and came up with a starfish rice krispie treat that is not only super easy to make, but super tasty too!

They turned out so darn adorable, and my kids were oooohing and ahhhhhing over how delicious they were!

Here’s how I made them:

1. Make yourself a regular old batch of rice krispie treats following the classic recipe.
2. Then instead of putting them all into one greased pan, separate some and layer it onto a small cookie sheet with edges (you basically just want them to be thinner than normal)
3. Once they are cooled add a quick layer of prepackaged frosting to the top – I choose white vanilla frosting
4. Then crush up some graham crackers so it looks like sand!  (this is always the kids job – they love it)
5. and sprinkle the “sand” (crushed graham crackers) over the top of the frosting until it is completely covered
6. add Wilton candy eyeballs and your done!

I was super surprised at how much my family loved these.  Even the hubby eat more than his share…and everyone had fun watching him bite into the little starfish while we made “don’t eat me” and “eek” noises!  It was a really fun lunch to share together and later we all snuggled up and watched the movie together.  It’s one of those days that I will never forget, and I hope my kids don’t either.  It was a great reminder that, things don’t have to be fancy or over the top to be really special.  The kids loved that whole day, and the small amount of effort that it took me to throw things together, really made the kids feel special.  Most of all I feel like we celebrated the last days of summer vacation…together…

….with a few extra starfish friends!