When your kid wants a rainbow party…

As usual, I’m late posting the birthday theme idea…only two months though, it was four last year. So as you can guess from the title, when I asked me little Mandingo what kind of party he’d like, he said “a rainbow party Mammy” and so my work began. Rainbows, obviously are lots of lovely colours, so I thought the best way to approach it and make it fun would be to have a Rainbow Paint Party in the Park.

With that in mind, I headed to my beloved Ebay and searched “rainbow birthday party invites”, shur you’d be blown away with choice but I went loved these from Sweet Sentiments. It was £3.99 for 12.

Now the cake! The curse-a-God cake! I’ve previously made a Teddy bear cake (sitting up I’ll have you know) , a George Pig themed cake and a Lightning Mcqueen shaped cake, but this! THIS!!! This simple sponge cake was supposed to be easy….it was not…mind this was purely down to the roll out icing which I DO NOT get on with. These are the woes of home made cake making (I lovingly blame my Ma for always baking our cakes and thus I feel I should to the same for my sprogladite). As always I used a prepackaged cake mix for my cake…less hassle. I baked 6 thin sponges, using 6 different food colourings to create the rainbow inside. Unfortunately though, I wasn’t happy with the colours, they weren’t bright enough for me, but the kids ooohed and aaaahed on seeing it cut up, plus the height of the slices was unreal! 😀 I used jam and buttercream as fillings, alternating between layers. Now lads…now the fun began! I wanted a marbley/ colour splodge looking cake so I rolled out all the colours together as in the pic…. Of course I rolled it too bloody thin and it kept ripping as I lifted it. I tried sitting the cake on the icing and sorta folding the icing up around it….nah….no dice! I got thick then and I new in me heart of hearts that this would happen but I continued anyway….I smushed the icing back together and rolled it out again. Of course…just like when you mix paints, it turned brown!! FML!! I stupidly hoped for the best thinking maybe the underside would be ok and lifted it onto the cake. My son’s rainbow cake was now a swamp thing!!

I sent a pic to my Ma for help. Ma told me to stick some trees and little people on it and it would be grand! THIS…this was after she text my sis to say, say nothing but Donna’s messed up Conor’s cake….in our GROUP chat!! At this point I’d no back up icing left and I’d ruined my son’s birthday so I decided I needed a drink.

After buying nearly £30 pounds (yes, yes I know…) worth of cake resurrection supplies in a, what’s turning into a yearly Sunday morning cake panic dash to Morrisons, a patchy rainbow cake was created. In my eyes it was a bit poo but when the Small Man seen it he was delira and that was enough for me. I got the cool little bunting banner frommmm Ebaaaaay!!!

In keeping with the rainbow theme, I made my usual fruit pots, consisting of chopped up strawberries, grapes and blueberries. Actually…I’ll just do a list of what we had to eat;

I baked some yummy, smartie rainbow cookies using this recipe from Baking with Granny.

I like to make things a little bit fun for the kids, these chocolate and sprinkle rimmed ice cream cones were based on a Pinterest idea. I stuffed them with jellies and popped them in individual cone shaped bags.

I made some rice crispie squares, which turned pink as I only had a bag of pink and white marshmallows, topped with sprinkles.

Marshmallow pops. Super simple, just large marshmallows, dipped in chocolate and sprinkles, stuck on a lollipop stick.

I always cheat with my buns…I buy prebaked ones and decorate how I like. So as it was a rainbow party, it wouldn’t be complete without some rainbows…hence my Rainbow Cloud cupcakes. Blue icing and rainbow laces…et voila!

I also took along a watermelon, popcorn, onion rings, two trays of sandwiches…..peanut butter, jam and cheese. My friend Elaine gave me a huge tub I filled with ice to keep the fruit shoots and fizzies (for the adults) in. Oh I also brought two mahooosive bottles of water to mix with robinsons.

Food done….now the party bags. I wanted everything rainbow themed. Everything here came from Ebay. I ordered rainbow cellophane bags from here and Thank You stickers from here. I stuck stickers on each bag and on each tube of giant bubbles,  also Ebay. I got some fab rainbow pencils from here and crayons for the younger ones from here. The really cute mini paint trays came from here and those cool pull-out-nib pencils here. Of course there had to be sweets, so each bag had a packet of swizzles, a retro rainbow lolly annnnd Rainbow drops!

Now as the Small Man is a Summer bub, I try to make use of the free parks where I can. It can be a pain in the ass getting everything there, which is why everything I make is fairly handy to transport, and with a little help from friends and family, it works. This year we headed to Kennington Park. I donned my best (£3 from the market) Rainbow party dress and Elaine packed up her car with all me bits and drove me round to set up, under a nice big tree.

I took around all my picnic blankets and asked people to bring one if they had any. I also took round The Monkey’s giant foam tiles to act as a more level “table” running down the middle of the blankets. My SiL, Katie and Chanelle helped me lay out all the food and the little plates and cups, all odd colours from the local 99p store. I tied some balloons from the tree branches so our guests could find us.

Now it wouldn’t be a paint party without paint so I took along pretty much all of my paint supplies and a giant cardboard build and paint your own house, that I’d bought in Lidl aaaages ago and was saving for a rainy day. I also had two rolls of paper in my suitcase of tricks. Katie was good enough to help (and be painted) by the kids whilst myself and Chanelle did some impressive first timer face painting, for anybody who fancied it. I got a nice little Snazaroo set off Ebay for about £13 and it was money well spent. I also took along an inflatable goals and a hoop throwing game that we had at home, and of course the kids had their giant bubble tubes to play with too.

I gotta say this has to be my favourite party we’ve had for the Small Man, the weather was great, it was like a mini festival, just missing the music and it really wasn’t that expensive….apart from the cake situation! I work out the party bags, including the bags and stickers to be just under £4 each, based on 20 kids and I got 24 bubble swords for £15. (Prices correct in July ’17)

Now this may seem mean and given that it’s a big class anyway, I don’t believe in inviting kids he doesn’t play with or mention to his parties but as his birthday fell on a school day, rather than hand out party bags after school, I thought it would be nice to bring something in for the whole class to share together at school. So as we’d just finished reading Handa’s surprise, I took the Small Man shopping and let him pick out his own fruits for his surprise to take to school for his birthday….hence Small Man’s Surprise!

I hope you enjoyed this post and got some inspiration from it. I know we’re coming into the winter months now but it maybe possible to adapt some of the “festival vibe” to an indoor set up. Don’t be shy, do comment and share your own party ideas…it’s good to share.

Thanks to everyone who helped me on the day especially the Hubbalump…God love him and I hope you all enjoyed it as much as we did.

Love,

Donna x