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 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!

Luke and Leia

Last Wednesday I pulled an all-nighter to get these costumes finished up in time for treat street at the high school.  Oscar was thrilled with his costume, and Alice kept her Leia hat on for the whole thing, so I'd call it a success!

My fierce children

A heart-melting daddy-daughter moment. 

I actually did get around to making them trick-or-treat bags... unfortunately is was the last 30 minutes before we had to leave! eek! The boot covers could use some work, but I ran out of time. They may get fixed at some point.... they may not. I'm thinking about doing a post on costume details, as that would have been nice to find when I was researching.

alice's valentine

last year since alice was less than 2 weeks old on valentine's day, we didn't bother with making her valentines.  but this year, we made her these ones.  the plan was to get some pop rocks and put them on the back like these on pinterest, but i didn't find any pop rocks in time for valentine's day.  no one complained though, since they got a picture of a cute girl.

wonderland cake

alice's birthday cake was pinspired by this cake, but i really didnt want to do fondant because it's icky (yes it is. don't argue with me). so i frosted it in buttercream (the pink/purple, blue and greens) and used fondant to make the decorations. and since i got only an hour of sleep because i stayed up working on this, i'm putting FOUR pictures so you can enjoy from all sides.

and i totally left it on that turntable.. there was no way i was trying to lift that thing.

this was my first attempt at a tiered cake.. i was pretty happy with the fact that it was only SLIGHTLY crooked.

the top smash cake was red velvet, the second tier was white cake with a red velvet heart, and the bottom was chocolate/red velvet/chocolate.

and here is the inside of the heart cake. most people wanted chocolate cake, but i was ready to start forcing white cake on people just so i could see if this thing worked. (pinspiration) the chocolate/red velvet/chocolate with the white buttercream in between was actually pretty impressive looking itself...

alice's cake eating station

alice saying 'yay' about eating cake.

ok.. just one more picture of the cake..  my camera didn't quite capture how vibrant it was... but this picture makes it look sparkly... weird!

wonderland funderland

so for some party activities we had some photo booth props pinspired by these. i made this little flower centerpiece with googly eyes like these flowers on pinterest, but ended up just using it to stick the props in. i need to pawn this stuff off on someone else having an alice in wonderland party - it feels so wasteful to toss it all in the trash...

we also had a little place for the time capsule so that people could write letters for alice. i put one of the invitations and a party favor in there too and she'll open it up when she turns 18. out of town family - the capsule is not sealed if you would like to send any 2011 memorabilia or letters for in there.

we also decorated some party hats (pinspiration) and the kids searched for these little white rabbits that  i printed and cut out. (and you can probably find them in all these blog posts because we hid them before taking any pictures...)