Rainbow themed birthday party

Cakey chose a rainbow theme for her 4th birthday. It worked so well, all the kids had a wonderful time.  Here's a few of the things we did:

I covered all our tables with rainbow and unicorn wrapping paper which was inexpensive and looked great. On one table I set up a craft area to make flying rainbows with streamers which I saw on a pretty cool life. This was a simple, non-messy activity that was easy to pre-prepare before the party. I supplied paper plates cut in half with pre-cut streamers, markers, cotton wool balls for clouds, markers, glue sticks and sticky tape. Cakey and I had made prototypes before the party to hang over the table.

There were lots of toddlers attending the party so I also set up a rainbow playdough table with coloured paddle pop sticks and drink umbrellas. I made six batches of playdough (red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple) during the week before the party. I use an easy no-cook playdough recipe so it didn't take too long (2 cups of plain flour, half cup of salt, 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil, 2 tablespoons of cream of tartar, approximately 1 and a quarter cups of boiling water with food colouring added to the water). This was a popular table!

There was lots of rainbow inspired food too – a huge platter of rainbow coloured fruit as well as paper cups full of popcorn mixed with coloured fruit loops (cheerios). I am not capable of baking a super-fancy cake but I can decorate with the best of them! I made a plain vanilla cake, iced it with butter cream icing and carefully decorated it with coloured chocolate smarties in concentric rings. And of course, we served rainbow orange jellies. The kids pounced on them. To make orange jellies, slice oranges in half and scoop out the flesh. Prepare jelly as per the packet instructions and allow to cool for 20 minutes. Pour the jelly into the empty orange halves and place in the fridge until set. Before serving cut the orange halves into quarters. Kids love them.

Rainbow cake decorated with smarties

The kids and I made our own rainbow party bags, have at a look at this post to see how they turned out. For tonnes of other party ideas check out my party, party, party Pinterest board.

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