Tip for the Laundromat

If you're needing to keep lots of quarters nice and neat, $20 in quarters fits perfectly in an m&m's mini tube! We've been using these for a long time, and periodically have to replace them due to them getting broken (they are kid magnets). But I'd say there are worse things than having to eat m&m's...

Rainbow Party Pictures

Stories with Aaron and Auntie

Looking sleepy with Nana

Forkpicks and fruit dip!

 Getting crafty with Daddy and Mama

Mouth crammed full of pinata chocolate

She is now a pro at present opening

Not phased by Grampa's impossible ribbons

The birthday princess

Trying to get in this big present

Kitchen!! (which sometimes gets called chicken instead..)

Making a wish

And later that night she wanted to try on all her birthday presents and be a ballerina 

and a princess

Rainbow Party Activities and Favor bags

For our party time crafting activity, we made "stained glass rainbow" paintings. Each kid got a clear sheet protector (the kind that goes in 3 ring binders) that I had cut the 3 ring side and bottom off of. That made one big clear sheet with a fold in the center. We opened those up and taped them down on a rainbow template so that they knew where to paint their rainbows. 

They painted rainbows and then we sandwiched the paint back up between the clear sheets (no worries about sending wet paint home with kiddos).

 Then we glued them between two black sheets of cardstock that had the same rainbow shape as the template.

It was a pretty fun activity, though kind of messy. 

Our next party activity was a pinata. I happened upon this rainbow #2 pinata at the party store (on sale!) and figured it was destined to be. It was the kind you hit with a bat, so it needed a little bit of tweaking to be functional for a 2 year old's party in a tiny apartment. I cut a door into the bottom, tied a ribbon to it and then covered the door with some tissue paper to keep it closed.

Then I hot glued more ribbons to the door so that they would pull off instead of opening the pinata, and added a bit more tissue paper to hide the ribbon ends so that older cousins couldn't look and see which one was the winner.

Alice LOVED the pinata.  This is her thinking really hard about which ribbon was the winner (she did pull the winning ribbon)

 Picking a ribbon

Lane pulling a ribbon 

Pinata madness. Alice thought chocolate falling from a pinata was the best thing ever. 

Each kid got a favor bag with watercolor paints, a set of rainbow paintbrushes, rainbow lollipop, skittles, etc. They used their favor bags for holding their pinata goodies as well.

Rainbow Party Foods

 Rainbow party foods! I tried to stick with foods that Alice likes and rainbow/pot of gold themed things.

We had a fruit rainbow with fruit dip clouds. I was hoping to have the clouds on the same tray with the rainbow, but there wasn't a big enough tray for that. There was a LOT of candy. A pot of gold - candies wrapped in gold wrappers - rolos, werther's, snickers minis, etc. A bowl of skittles, rainbow suckers and rainbow fruit belt things.

 I used a sugar cookie recipe, divided into 6 parts and added food dye, pressed each into layers in an 8" x 8" and chilled in the fridge, then sliced them to make easy rainbow sugar cookies.

 More skittles, gold nuggets (honey-mustard pretzels), rainbow goldfish, and rainbow straws.

Our main dish was a big pot of golden mac and cheese.  Alice is all about the noodles and cheese, so this was right up her alley. 

And of course a fluffy cloud cake - 

with rainbow layers on the inside.

 And I saved the best for last - Jeremy lit up our rainbow drinks! They looked glowy and fabulous.

Rainbow Party Decorations

 The long awaited rainbow party posts!  Pardon the extra super crappy pictures, was in a rush and using an ancient camera. Here are the decorations. A happy birthday sign,

 The windows had balloon clouds with tissue paper rainbows.  

 streamer rainbow with tissue paper clouds and pot of gold on one wall

A big balloon rainbow

And a tablecloth rainbow on the ceiling. This was one plastic tablecloth of each color, cut in half lengthwise and attached to the ceiling with clear push-pins.

We also used folded tablecloths with a white one on top to make a table skirt but still leave the tabletop white so that it didn't get too busy with the colorful food. 

A few instagram photos of all the rainbow goodness.

This was post party.  These decorations stayed around a long time because they made me happy.

A nighttime view of our rainbow windows from outside.   

Rainbowy goodness!

Batman Birthday Lunch

I was SO excited to pack Oscar a birthday lunch in his Planetbox this year!! I bought some blank magnets that I used for Valentine's day and couldn't erase, so I attached some batman images with double sided adhesive and then covered them with packaging tape (because my contact paper seems to be lost forever in the craft closet). Now that his birthday is over I plan to change that top right magnet to just his name.

His lunch had cucumber slices with a bat symbol, grapes underneath cheese letters, peanut butter & jelly bat sandwiches with some extra cheese bats, cantaloupe chunks, some sno-caps and a tootsie roll pressed out and cut into a bat shape

We found him this batman funtainer at a discount store and decided he should get it with his birthday lunch instead of wrapping it up.

And in his big dipper for snack time were a few packets of batman popping candy and some snapea crisps.  Most of this came back uneaten and he came home with a 102.2 fever on his birthday, but made a quick recovery and felt good enough for his fondue birthday dinner and oodles and oodles of candy all weekend.