Rainbow Dreams

Hello friends! I am done with birthday parties until next year! What a relief! Time to relax for 24 hours until I start the Christmas project list. The birthday season is completely bittersweet because my kiddos are growing up so fast! I did remember to take pictures with the wooden blocks I made when Patricia was born, and they are both big kids now.

Speaking of big kids, Julius has been using lots of slang that I don’t understand. Here’s a conversation we had the other day:

Julius: Do you know what sigma means?

Me: It’s a Greek letter.

Julius: Well that’s right but it also means ‘sus’.

Me: What is ‘sus’? (I know sus.)

Julius: Sus is when you’re koo koo kachoo and naughty at the same time.

Patricia still says plenty of cute things. I am disappointed though that this year she figured out “cupcapes” are actually pronounced cupcakes. There goes that cute one. On the morning of Patricia’s party the kids woke up and I heard Patricia outside my door speaking in a hushed voice to Julius:

“They’re both still asleep. They’re not even awake. How will they go to my party?”

I decided to get up then so I didn’t worry her further. The party with a dozen 4 year olds was quite a bit more chaotic than the one with a dozen and a half 7 year olds. And we had one/two activities that were total flops. That aside I do think everyone had fun! I was worried about it until I came to pick Patricia up today and all the kids rushed me and talked about Patricia’s party. Her teacher said they’d been talking about it all day! I guess I can call that a success!

Theme

Patricia told me many moons ago that she wanted a “rainbow unicorn” themed party. I figured, “slam dunk. This will be easy.” The problem is there are too many rainbow unicorn things out there. Everything can be rainbow unicorn. As you know I like to have kind of a plot or flow to my parties and this one I was challenged! I was worried thinking about Julius’s 5th birthday where some kids spent 15 seconds on each activity and others spent 30 minutes. So I went with the “so many activities” mode.

Activities

Unicorn Makeup

I made a bunch of unicorn headbands for the party ages ago. I thought they’d be a cute give away. And a Patricia party wouldn’t be complete without face paint. So I set up a face painting station in the lounge and painted rainbows on anyone who wanted it. I wanted to use a rainbow split cake, and the super gentle brand I used last year (Snazzaroo) doesn’t make them. I went with another reputable hypoallergenic brand called Tag. It worked pretty well! Though I regret not making stencils for the stars and clouds because it would have made it far quicker!

Unicorn Stickers

While kiddos were getting their faces painted we set out a bunch of unicorn sticker boards that my mom had found. One of the kids was so silly and gave their unicorn a mustache. Much like Julius’ 5th birthday some kids spent an hour at this and some kids spent 5 seconds.

Necklace

While I was finished up the face paint we let everyone make rainbow necklaces. I made the charms out of the UV reactive bottles from our sunscreen.

Unicorn Hunt

I decided I wanted to give away a unicorn and was debating between a peg doll unicorn and a little stuffed unicorn. I pinned a bunch of inspiration pictures and Will thought the inspiration for the unicorn stuffy looked cuter.

To find the unicorn we thought it would be cool to follow a string around the room. But with 10 (actually 11) kids the path around the room was complete chaos. Julius was able to do it no problem, but most of the 4 year olds had tons of problems. They ended up getting tangled in the string…. so I had to cut kids out of the deathtrap web.

Tattoo Hunt

We also hid tattoos all around the room (Will did this), and our theory was that they would work on the web and afterwards they’d notice the tattoos. But some kids just noticed the tattoos and collected all 100 of them. I think 2 kids found all of them. In retrospect we should have done this in 2 rooms. Next time!

Paint a Cookie

This is my favorite project I’ve done in a while. I made a bunch of paintable sugar cookies and after lunch let the kids paint them. The kids seemed to really like them and this is the one activity that every single kid participated in.

TP Roll Unicorn

This activity was a bit of a challenge for some, but everyone persevered! I think they came out cute!

Bounce House

We had the bounce house that Laura and Sal gave us set up in the garage as a backup plan. Well all the kids heard about it and they all bounced for about 30 minutes beyond when the party lasted.

Lunch

We once again had party pizza from Mr. Z’s but this time they got the order correct. I also did rainbow fruit and veggie platters. For drinks we had Polar unicorn seltzers and lemonade… this time with color changing ice cubes. And once again I forgot to take a picture of the setup!

Dessert

I was planning to make a unicorn cake with rainbow layers and surprise sprinkles like I did for Julius’s 3rd birthday. But Patricia said she wanted cupcakes. So I made unicorn cupcakes. I used a different recipe for the cake which got rave reviews. It was kind of a terrible recipe though. The cakes rose and then fell even though I cooked them about double what the recipe called for. I felt they came out pretty nice though I think the chocolate frosting and cake is far superior.

By the way did I mention my mom cleaned our house before the party?! It was a life saver!!