Party On! Adaleine's Rainbow Birthday Party

I am a bit overdue on getting these pictures posted so here’s the plan: I am going to post one meeeellion pictures of what we did for Sissy Bell’s Rainbow Birthday party and you’re going to bear with me. Capiche? Sweet. Here we go. : ) Starting with the invite...

 If you remember the two invitations that I used as a jumping off point for the party, you’ll see that this one is a pretty good mesh of the polka-dot and the pennant ones, probably leaning a bit more toward the ‘Landon’ one. I created these using my sister’s Creative Memories program, and let me say that I just love it!! It’s so easy and MUCH more affordable than Photoshop. I know if I had a bunch of photos to edit and such I’d spring for the real deal, but this program is perfect for what I need and my sister is nice enough to let me use hers until I save my spending money for my own. : )

I was uber excited about the décor behind the table. Similar to my inspiration here, but much more affordable than yards and yards of tulle, not to mention getting to skip the hours of pom-pom construction! And I think it turned out pretty dang good! If ah do say so mah darn self.

Here are a few pictures of the food table I set up for the party. You can see my pretzels inspired here, my fruit rainbow (blatant rip-off from here), and my colorful Twizzler display ala this site. My amazing sister spent 14+ hours making that rainbow layer cake we saw here, which means I get to go help her paint all the trim in her house in January. : ) The slushy punch is a recipe that I got from my sister (her mother-in-law is basically a slushy punch superhero) and I made a lemon batch along with a strawberry one. You can never have too much slushy punch. Word.

For decorations I actually kept it pretty simple (and cheap!) going with just streamers and balloons. The focal point was the cake table with the streamer backdrop, then I prettied up the stairs with some balloons and covered the beam right inside the door with all the colors of our rainbow. Please forgive the weird lighting and such; I didn’t take good pictures beforehand and the sun was coming right in during the party. Dang sun. My sister made the balloon wreath. ‘Cause she’s frigging amazing, but whatever.

To kill time during the party, I had our kitchen table set up with Froot Loops and string for necklaces (because everybody needs some edible accessories) and a toss game where the kiddos tossed little bundles of rainbow-colored balloons into different bowls for bragging rights. The kids had lots of fun, but I have no pictures for you since I don’t want to put other people’s munchkins on here without permission. ‘Cause dude, that ain’t cool. Just imagine lots of adorable kids having sooo much fun. There! You got the picture!

Before opening presents, I thought it would be a good idea to have all the kids sit down and listen to a story. If it had been any other party and any other story, this would seem like a lame idea but it totally worked! The book we read was ‘A Rainbow of My Own’ by Don Freeman. It’s a pretty simple book and worked perfectly for our group of kids who were mostly four and under. They loved it. 

Party favors were so much fun! I tied up ribbon scraps to make these little wavy garlands to send home with everyone just like here, and I loved this gal’s idea of the white bags to let the colors of the ribbon pop. Then I just wrote everyone’s name on their bag’s tag and sent them on their merry way after all the festivities.

Here’s the part where I just bury you under a bunch of cute pictures. Judah eating rainbow cake? Check! The girls with Nana and Papa? Check! Sissy picking out her birthday present? Check! Readyyyyyyyyyyy GO!

And that, my friends, is how I threw a Rainbow Birthday Party for my little Adaleine Grace. She had so much fun, we crammed 42--yes, 42!--people into our house, and I was exhausted at the end. Maybe next time I'll tone it down a bit. We'll see ; )