Rainbow Party

My three kids all have winter birthdays right around the holidays. While that's a wonderful time of year, it's a stinky time for a kid's birthday party. Instead, we have a whopper, blow-out, half-birthday party for them in June. It is a lot of work, but worth it. This year, the theme was Rainbows, and was it beautiful! Honestly, what's prettier than a rainbow, right? I hope you enjoy the pictures.

Gift Bags

One of the projects that took the longest was the gift bags. At first I had trouble finding rainbow themed items that would appeal to both boys and girls. When all was said and done, though, these bags were full of wonderful stuff!

*SLINKYS* Who doesn't love a Slinky? These miniature ones came in (sort-of) rainbow colors.

*CHOCOLATE* M&M's come in every color of the rainbow and the ROLO's make the pot of gold.
Yes, I picked out all the brown ones. And for future reference, there are WAY more brown, orange and blue than there are red, yellow and green. I really like the way the little flags turned out. They say, "You're my pot of gold at the end of the rainbow". Thanks to "It Is What It Is" for the idea. http://bethproudfoot.blogspot.com/

*BUBBLES* At the party we had a baby pool filled with super-duper giant bubble making soap. I made giant bubble wands and it worked beautifully until the mixture got too much grass and dirt and rowdy boy in it. So, we had fun bubbles at the party and more fun bubbles to take home. I used the left over ribbon to tie a different color on each little bottle.

*HAIR RIBBONS* As I mentioned, finding rainbow items with feminine appeal was easy peasy. Making hair ribbons was a no-brainer. I remember having hair clips attached to a rainbow of ribbons when I was a little girl. I loved them so much. I hope these will bring just as much joy to all the little girls who took them home.

*PRISM GLASSES* By far the coolest thing in the gift bag was the glasses. They were my seven-year-old's favorite. Looking at light through them creates rainbows in your vision. They're also supposed to be great fun when watching fireworks, so the timing of this gift is perfect. YAY!

*CRAYONS* Not in their original form, but melted down into these gorgeous little multicolored gems. They were just so, so pretty. They looked like candy so....

I wrapped them in cellophane, and tied tiny labels to them.

Oooooh, I just love how they turned out!

*NOTEPADS* The kids were going to need something to use those gorgeous crayons on, so I made tiny notepads out of some paint sample cards.

Voila! Gift bags. I made personalized tags and tied each bag with the rainbow ribbons.

Fun & Games

We had an inflatable pool (which was way more popular than you might think) and a slip n' slide. The kids were bigger this year, so my husband added 25 more feet of plastic sheeting to the slide- a very good call! Next year we'll just have one long, giant sheet of heavy duty plastic and do away with the store-bought slip n' slide. 

 

In order to have more water around the yard, I set out 6 huge buckets (striped with a rainbow of duct tape and filled with water) and supplied the kids with water guns and sponge balls.

Instructions for how to make these cuties can be found here:
http://onecharmingparty.com/2011/03/23/water-party-sponge-ball-tutorial/
I made one adjustment, however. Instead of tying them with dental floss, (I couldn't get it tight enough) I used very thin zip-ties, and trimmed the ties as close as I possibly could so no one would get hurt with them.

Buckets striped with rainbows of duct tape

We had a small baby pool filled with bubble soap and I made bubble wands, both the string kind and the wire kind, to make giant bubbles. It worked perfectly until the bubble solution got dirty. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of the giant bubbles. There are some great pictures here (http://momenttomomentdk.blogspot.com/2010/06/huge-bubble-magic-inspired-by-childhood.html) along with instructions for how to make the string wands.

String wands with duct tape stripes for color

Wire wands with pretty beads

Trying out the string wands.

My husband spray painted dots in the grass to make an outdoor Twister game. We didn't have a spinner, so I printed up little cards with the colors and instructions to draw out of a plastic jar. To keep the jar nearby, I attached a loop to it with zip-ties (yes, I do love zip-ties) and hung it on a low tree branch.  

Lawn Twister

Right and left feet, right and left hands and HEAD!

Decorations & Food

Balloon rainbow

Crepe paper chandeliers and rainbow kites

Food table with sky blue back drop, "rain" made from silver Mardi Gras beads, and a rainbow of balloon cut-outs

Rice Krispy treats with rainbow sprinkles mixed in, meringues with a rainbow candy on top, rainbow fruit kabobs, skittles, rainbow lollies and PIZZA!

In the upper right corner are rainbow Twizzlers in cups separated by color. The cups weren't tall enough to hold the Twizzlers up, so they drooped over the sides like rainbow octopi. Meh! Good 'nuff.

Party blow outs and water bottles wrapped with rainbow colored duct tape

Gift bag table with take-home cd's of the party music. In lieu of birthday gifts, we asked for donations to be made to a local homeless network. http://ihnjc.com/

No matter how fabulous, no day is immune from a tantrum. *sigh*

This just made me laugh. Who else has seven giant daisies in their kitchen for a week?