Beach Ball Fruit Pizza & Bell Pepper Octopus Veggie Dip

We recently had a super fun lit­tle “kick off to sum­mer” beach-themed playdate/party! And, I made a beach ball fruit pizza & a bell pep­per veg­gie dip octo­pus for some of our snacks! I love the way they turned out and the kids thought it was so fun!

Beach Ball Fruit Pizza

The inspi­ra­tion for this fun cre­ation came from the fab­u­lous Hun­gry Hap­pen­ings site! I pinned her beach ball fruit pizza many months ago and finally had an excuse to make a ver­sion of it!

To make a beach ball fruit pizza, you’ll need some sugar cookie dough (I opted for Pills­bury store bought, but you could cer­tainly use your favorite recipe), a sweet creamy spread, and var­i­ous types of fruit. For fruit, I used straw­ber­ries (about 6–10), blue­ber­ries (I used frozen because I couldn’t find a good deal on fresh), fresh pineap­ple, kiwi (about 3), mango (2), and banana (1/2 driz­zled with lemon juice). For ease of mak­ing, I actu­ally cut up all the fruit (except for the bananas) the night before and put it in sep­a­rate con­tain­ers. It made it SUPER quick to put together the fruit pizza in the morn­ing. Plus, then what­ever fruit I had left­over got all mixed together and we had one super yummy fruit salad!

Mak­ing it was really rather easy. I just spread out the cookie dough on to a greased metal pizza pan and baked at 350 until it was slightly golden brown. For our creamy spread, I used my favorite fruit dip recipe (I should do a post on that ). Basi­cally, it’s a mix of cream cheese, marsh­mal­low creme, and orange juice (some­times I put some crushed pineap­ple in it too). It’s SO good!

I was wor­ried about break­ing my giant cookie, so I just left it right on the pizza pan. Once cool, I spread the fruit dip over the cookie and then started with the fruit sec­tions. I started with the mid­dle cir­cle and then worked my way around. Super easy!

Bell Pep­per Octo­pus Veg­gie Dip

The kids absolutely LOVED the octo­pus! Some even ate a few of his ten­ta­cles! It was another idea I had pinned long ago–this one from Fam­ily Fun! Such a cute extra touch that didn’t take much extra time at all. You’ll need two bell pep­pers (I think red, orange, or yel­low would be best), the dip of your choice (we always make a ranch dip), and two black olive slices.

To make, just hol­low out one bell pep­per and place it in the cen­ter of the dip. I inten­tion­ally tried to find one with a nice shape–looking more “octo­pus like” to me! Use a lit­tle dip to place the two black olive slices. Then, cut some long strips from the other bell pep­per for the ten­ta­cles. That’s it!

These were fun & easy! Per­fect for a beach-themed party…or just some sum­mer­time fun!

What are YOUR favorite fun foods? Stay tuned for some fun beach-themed ice cream ideas tomor­row!

Linked to: *Tip Junkie, *Show Me What Ya Got,  *Tidy­Mom, *Skip to My Lou, *Today’s Cre­ative