So yesterday was Kyrie's 5th birthday party. I have to say that even thought I was completely dissapointed with the way the day went down..didnt get into the church until 5 (which was the time that I told everyone to be there) and a few important people couldn't make it...but She had a blast. We did a rainbow theme, and I made everything... well, almost. She requested a rainbow LAYERED (not just a cake with rainbow icing, 6 flipping layers, each one a different color) cake, rainbow playdough, some decorated marshmellows.. stuff like that. Since this is the first birthday party that I have not worked or had school to interfear with planning... I decided...I'll do everything that I can by hand...make it more special.

So, two days later, I joined pintrest, and started looking at different things trying to get ideas for what the heck I was going to do. I even googled "rainbow party"..which turned up some very inappropriate results, so we stuck with the stuff on pintrest instead.

Day one started Monday.. I went to the grocery store.. with my list..which by the way, if you have a busy family life, or if your like me, and cant remember what you need at the store 10 seconds after you back out of the driveway..and can't remember to take the list inside the store with you... join Cozi.com. It's an awesome website that lets you build a family calendar, and my favorite thing...it lets you build a grocery list online...then you have the option of sending the list to your phone in a text message!Awesome!!  I know, right? Why didn't I think of that? Moving on... It took me nearly 2 hours to get the shopping done. I went after naptime, so by the time I got home...I had just enough time to make some mess free finger painting bags (I'll explain later) and put on a movie for the kids so that I could make dinner. So, kinda a wasted day.

Tuesday, I got out all of my stuff and began building the playdough and the mason jars that would contain it. At first I was going to make glitter dough, but I figured my son would just eat it. So, I looked for a alternative that would be ok should someone (Tyler man) decide put it to the culnary test. I chose koolaide playdough, because one..its basics are flour, sugar, koolaide, and water..I had everything that I needed to make it, in my pantry. Two.. it can be eaten should someone get curious, and it smells good. So...simple right? WRONG! Making that playdough was literally one of the single most mind boggling messes of my adult life. I'll tell you why..here is the instructions

1 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
3 teaspoons Cream of tatar
2 table spoons olive or vegetable oil
1 cup of water
1 package of koolaide-any flavor

Mix together, cook over medium to low heat for 10 minutes or until thick, allow to cool.Knead for 2 minutes or until pliable.  If tacky add 1/4 cup flour


Well.. It thickened in like 2 minutes. I learned that the lemonade, does not actually have any color...so I colored it with Wilton's Gel food coloring and got an awesome sunny yellow color. The add 1/4 cup of flour, should have read  more like...when you take it off the stove to knead it...just dump the whole flipping bag of flour in there...and work it! I lost count of how much flour I ended up using, but by the time I was done..so was my bag of flour. It took me FOREVER!! However, I am now able to recite the instructions at the drop of a hat, by memory. I made 5 colors, red, orange, yellow, green, and blue. I had the stuff to make purple..but by the time I finished the first 5... I was ready to pull my hair out! It made a ton of playdough, I had more than enough for the 6 small mason jars that I was going to put it in, which was a good thing. Word to the wise.. if you choose to layer the colors in the jar one on top of the other, do two things. One, flour between each layer, and two allow the dough to dry out a bit before you shut the lid.. if you don't.. it will stick, and it will be a pain the the butt to get out the next day...TRUST me! The second round of playdough, I let them air out a bit (about 15-20 minutes , I threw a load of laundry in to wash and pulled one out of the dryer..did't fold) then rolled the colors into small balls that I pressed into flour on each side before I layered it in the glass. It wwas still a bit tacky after that, but you could actually get each layer out one at a time. I put the play dough in small mason jars, and made a handle out of some rainbow ribbon, and multicolored number buttons that I found in the sewing section at Wal-Mart. I cut the ribbon, glued the ends together, and then glued a number 5 button on top.. to attach the "handle", I unscrewed the lid of the jar laid a section of the ribbon across the rim, making sure the button was at the top, and screwed the lid on. Easy peasy!

Here is the end result, cute right?

So... I also made her a bow and a special birthday bow, using some of the same rainbow ribbon and a few scraps of ribbon I had in my craft drawer... I can't find a picture of the bow it's self, but I do have one of my sweet girl wearing it. I'm planning on making a ton of summer hair bow's for the girls soon, and I will post instructions for all of them, including the birthday bow and ribbon shoes then, but here is a shot of the birthday bow. I will tell you that if you can find the cheap keds or faded glory tennis shoes..buy a few pairs of them. Even if you can ony find the white ones.buy them. They can always be dyed another color to match an outfit, and they are super cheap! So your daughter can have a little pair of shoes to match most of her outfits without doing major damage to your wallet!

Not an upclose picture, but you can see it pretty well.

Here are the ribbon shoes.. she is still wearing them, and now Nataleigh wants a pair. They would be super cute for a cheerleading squad or dance team.. just a though!

Now on to the cake! The most time consuming task of the entire project. I found a site that explained how to make the cake from scratch...and I though about it until I looked at how long it took to do that.. 6 hours! I have 3 small children running around my house. There is no way I can devote 6 hours to baking one cake..so I cheated. Bought white cake mixes, 3 got 6 mixing bowls, and divided the cake batter nto each bow ( about 2 cups of cake batter per bowl is more than enough) Added about a teaspoon of Wilton's Gel frosting coloring...and mixed. I baked them according to the time on the box. I let each of the layers cool, then stacked them. Purple on bottom, blue, green, then yellow orange and red. I used regular vanilla Betty Crocker icing, to frost the cake, Kyrie wanted the frosting orange, so I put some dye in the frosting as well. I put it on a cake stand, surrounded the bottom with gulballs, and called it a cake. The cake turned out a bit lopsided, but by the time I was done.. I didnt care. I just wanted to load the thing up and get it the heck out of there! It looked kinda pitiful on the outside, but the inside was awesome. The colors were vibrant, and it put a big smile on my little girl's face...which was all that mattered.

So.. like I said, the outside...kinda sad, but the inside.. is pretty much awesomenss on a plate. She though it was the best thing since sliced bread, and everyone was pretty much in awe of the vivid colors I had managed to produce in this cake. I will probably never do this again, because I fear for my sanity.... but it was all worth it to see my little girl's face to light up like that.

So when the kids left the party, they left with three things. A small water bottle (the little ones, like 4 ounces?) with ribbon wrabbed around the middle, the homemade playdough, and a small bag of Werthers Original candies... the thought process was this.. Rain comes before every rainbow, but it's always followed with a pot of gold.. The only suggestion I will make...is for the water bottles. I could only find thin satin ribbon, which was too thin to cover the blue bottle wrapper. I suggest using grosgrain, if you are content on doing a white base ribbon. Some thing that is thicker and that the bottle wrapper wont show through. Then wrap your second ribbon around the middle and glue. For whatever reason, I can't get the darn picture to upload right now, so I will post it later.

Werthers happened to be the ONLY candy I could find in a gold wrapper. Oh the joys of living in a small town! I wanted gold coins, but didnt have time to order them in, and again..we have no where to find them here in small town USA. So, I improvised..still turned out cute. For table decorations I just covered the able with plastic table cloths, and threw what was left of the multicolored buttons on them. I put the forks and spoons on mason jars... served tea and lemonade....and Oh, yeah.. The kids table! I nearly forgot I covered one of the tables with poster boards... got a giant box of crayons (Its the one that comes with it's own plastic sharpner) divided them into three mason jars..and Tah Dah! A table that they can color on.

So, that is the ends and outs of the rainbow birthday party, please feel free to contact me with any questions you have...or comments!

xoxo!
Audrie