Mom transforms home into aquarium to celebrate 2-year-old son's birthday in quarantine
Becky Spagnuolo transformed her home into an underwater paradise.
A Michigan mom went all out to turn her son's canceled birthday trip to the aquarium into the best celebration ever.
The family was planning to travel from Wixom, Michigan, to Chicago to visit the Shedd Aquarium to celebrate her son Clark's April 13 birthday.
Clark has always had a fascination with ocean life, Spagnuolo told "Good Morning America."
"Some of his first words were ‘fish’ and ‘Dory’ [from 'Finding Nemo']."
The mom of two said they were "bummed but completely understanding" when their long-awaited trip to the aquarium was canceled due to COVID-19 concerns and the family was in one of the hot spots.
Spagnuolo immediately began brainstorming and said the idea to transform her home into a living aquarium came to her during one of those "restless nights."
"We really needed something to make everyone smile," she said.
Spagnuolo and her husband, Nick, immediately threw themselves into planning the best birthday celebration for her youngest son by recreating the Shedd Aquarium in their Michigan living room.
For two weeks, the family crafted together and read ocean-themed books while the mom did research on the aquarium's website to see which animals they could recreate at home.
Although she was crafty, the mom said she had "never done something on this level before." She never had to step into a store -- everything for the party was recycled from something found in their house or found through online shopping.
On the morning of Clark's birthday, Spagnuolo got up at 4 a.m. to transform the home into a blue oasis with the help of her 4-year-old son, Mikey.
She taped blue plastic tablecloths to the windows for the ocean, hung homemade paper jellyfish from the ceiling, blew up balloons and even made her own paper tickets so her kids could enter the aquarium.
They broadcast a livestream from the Shedd Aquarium on the television. A projector that cost only $13 on Amazon displayed water reflections on the ceiling.
When Clark walked saw the room, he was completely stunned into silence. "He absolutely loved it," Spagnuolo said.
A puppet show was put on for the children using inflatable dolphins, they fished for candy, played pin the tail on the stingray and decorated toilet paper rolls to look like the Magellanic penguins found at Shedd.
Seeing her sons enjoying the space they created, "was a big sigh of relief. There’s been a lot of anxiety, a lot of fear," she said.
"It’s hard to vocalize how I'm feeling right now ... Working on this project gave myself and my family something else to think about. So it was heartwarming for me to see both my boys so happy, but then in the back of my mind, I was still wondering when or if I’d actually get to take them to the real thing?"
The Michigan mom told "GMA" that the decorations are still hanging up, days after the celebration, because no one wants to see it taken down.
"I hope it gives other parents some ideas of how to make things a little better for the kids," she said.
The mom estimates she spent around $80 for the celebration.
"I know a lot of us are under financial strain right now, you don't need to spend a lot of money," she said.
Even when the decorations come "falling down," Spagnuolo says they will start another project to put something new up.
It gives the family an escape from reality, she said. Outside has fear, anxiety, and coronavirus, but inside is an ocean oasis where the celebration never ends.