Rainbow Birthday Party

Rainbow Birthday Party

For her 5th birthday, my daughter requested a rainbow party.  We had some activities, a lot of food, and some rainbow cupcakes. 

Because we only had a handful of kids at this party, the activities were minimal.  They primarily played on their own.  We had some beads and pipe cleaners to make rainbow bracelets, some water color paints/crayons and construction paper, and some typical backyard activities like balls/rackets and, of course, our play structure.  The group of 2-5 year olds were happy to just run around and play so more activities weren't really necessary.

Typical backyard activities for the kids.  (And new barbecue for lunch!)

Additional activities: pipe cleaner/bead bracelets, water color painting, and coloring

We also served burgers with fruit and potato salad for lunch, of course with a rainbow of plate and napkin options!  In addition, Grandma decided that the rainbow party needed rainbow food so she came up with some great ideas.  She served layered jello in little glasses with some tiny spoons and fruit rainbows on skewers that were displayed in watermelon.  Nice work, Grandma!

Fruit salad, jello, and fruit skewers with a rainbow of plates and napkins.

The cupcakes were the most involved part of this party. We used white cake but mixed it with food coloring and swirled to make colorful insides and then used various colors of frosting to frost each one.  This seems like an easy task, but given that I had a 2 year old and nearly-5 year old who wanted to be heavily involved in each step, I think it took us something like 7 hours.  (I was also using a single cupcake pan.)  

2 year old and nearly 5 year old swirling some of the cupcakes

LOTS of cupcakes were needed to make the rainbow

  I made considerably more cupcakes than we needed, but it was necessary in order to make the arc of the rainbow and have all the "necessary" colors, and also clouds (all by request of the birthday girl).  Perhaps mini cupcakes would have made more sense, unless we were actually having 50+ people there.  Counting grandparents, aunts/uncles, etc, I think we had 8 kids and 16 adults.  I probably could have done a dozen cupcakes for this crowd but in order to get the rainbow effect, I had to make 5 dozen.  (Plus another dozen since the box cake make 2 dozen each.)  Oh well!  It looks good, right?

Rainbow of cupcakes!

For party favors, we'd intended to have a bunch of the black rainbow scratch paper but the order was messed up and they were delivered about an hour after the party.  :(  The kids got water colors, crayons, and some stickers (along with whatever they created) but the scratch paper was supposed to be the star and it didn't make it.  What a bummer!  The little guests were happy enough and the parents were glad I didn't just rush out to buy more trinkets they didn't need, so I guess it worked out fine.  (I'm still sort of embarrassed about my paltry offering for party favors though.)  I learned to order earlier though so a re-order can still make it if the first round is messed up though!

Overall, the party went well.  The group of guests were wonderful and we had a great time.  Happy birthday little T!