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.

Rainbow Party Invitations

Did something simple for Alice's birthday invitations this year. Rainbowy paper goodness! 

I think the fanciest part was having a liner for the envelope... 

Each invitation was on a different color cardstock and they looked lovely all stacked in order, alas, I forgot to get pictures.  I don't have much else to say about these.. 

handmade gifting: family fun activity binder

For my SIL, Danielle, I had a hard time deciding what to make for her.  Jeremy thought of a binder where we put activities and money and supplies to do fun things throughout the year. Since she is a single working mom of 2, she doesn't have oodles of time to prep fun things, so here is what I came up with! I started with the biggest binder I could get and dividers for each month.

Then I printed out these cute calendar pages from Hello, Cuteness! and looked up fun "holidays" to fill them in with.  So here is a sampling of the things in the binder.  There was a  crown craft for epiphany, a few dollars for balloons to send off on Balloon Ascension Day, a microwave peanut brittle recipe for Peanut Brittle Day, some giant bubble wrap to pop on Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day, A wax paper/crayon shaving craft for early February Valentine's decorating,

A couple different pancake recipes for pancake day, Math games for World Math Day, bracelet making supplies for Middle Name Pride Day so that each could make a bracelet with their middle names (Which works out great since all three of them go by their middle names), some gold chocolate coins for hiding around on St. Patrick's Day, 

Supplies for an Easter bunny craft, a haiku for National Haiku Poetry Day, a Yoda craft for May the 4th, a dvd with a few different renditions of the chicken dance for National Chicken Dance Day, some money for buying zucchini seeds to plant, 

Doughnut recipe, family size tea bags for Iced Tea day, money for planting pumpkins in preparation for carving in October, money for ice cream, 

Friendship bracelet supplies for Friendship Day, a reminder for Sneak Some Zucchini onto your Neighbor's Porch Night (I put the money for planting zucchini early enough that she should have plenty for this..), kid friendly recipe for Kids Take Over the Kitchen Day, a short story for Roald Dahl Day, and each of them got a card and a mini gift for their birthdays,  

Money for chocolate cupcake baking, origami instructions and paper for Origami Day, a cookie recipe  to try out for National Cookie Day, instructions for origami ninja stars for International Ninja Day, money for a chocolate bar to use for Chocolate Covered Anything Day, and some Christmas themed puzzles. 

So I packed a LOT in there (I had to tie a ribbon around it to get it closed) and hopefully it will be a whole year of fun for them!  I'm thinking this would be a fun thing to give as a family gift or for a kid, too.

handmade gifting: fire starters and firewood sling

For my brother the outdoorsman and for Jeremy I made some of these skull fire starters.  I'd seen a few different variations around the internet (These from ThisHumbleHome made with cotton rounds, and a few options here and here) and decided to go with flammable material in wax since it would travel easily to Ohio.  I used a little silicon-skull-ice cube tray-mold-THING that I got from the Dollar Tree around Halloween. I poured in a bit of melted wax (leftover candles) first so the face would look nice and then I shoved as much mossy stuff in as possible and put some more wax on top. I plan to try drier lint next, but I think this maybe looked nicer for a gift.

Chris also got a firewood sling for carrying firewood to his campsite.  I got the inspiration from here where they re-purposed a canvas tote bag. It is shown folded in half, but it opens up and lays flat so that you can load up wood of all lengths and then just pick it all up by the handles. This was made with a piece of canvas drop cloth, some pleather for the handles and then I used a freezer paper stencil and acrylic paint to make the picture on the side. I'm hoping to make one of these for Jeremy as well!