I have enjoyed planning numerous themed birthday parties for my daughters over the years. One of my daughters decided she wanted an underwater themed birthday party a few years ago, which I had a lot of fun planning, decorating, and hosting with her.

I wanted to incorporate something like sand castles as decoration at the under water themed party, but I didn’t want sand brought into my house. It occurred to me one day as we were baking that brown sugar packs well and looks like sand.  Brown sugar is also inexpensive and edible, so I decided to create a few brown sugar animals as decoration on one of the tables for her party.

I thought they looked cute. My daughters have since had fun making their own brown sugar castles and creations, which I wrote a post about on Hands On As We Grow. You can read it here if you would like. (I wrote the post in March when we still had snow on the ground, and it was bitterly cold. This week, it has been in the 90s all week, so I found it funny the post says “It’s still too cold where I live to build sand castles at the beach.” It’s amazing how much the weather can differ from month to month in some locations!)

Anyways, my daughters played with brown sugar while I was writing the post for Hands On As We Grow, so I could take some pictures of what I was talking about. One of my daughters made a brown sugar submarine.

My other daughter worked on building a brown sugar tower.

They worked together and created a castle with a craft stick flag and bridge.

They had fun trying to destroy their brown sugar castle with little catapults (measuring spoons) filled with cannons (packed brown sugar).

I had cookie trays for them to use to try to contain all of the brown sugar. We still ended up with brown sugar on the counter, floor, and them. All of which was rather easy to clean up. The remaining brown sugar went back into a bowl for the next time they want to build brown sugar creations.

Building with brown sugar is messy, but it’s fun!

Check out the following posts for more building fun.

• 25 Tower Building Supplies- No Blocks Required
• Be a Builder by Building a Bridge