Megan's Rainbow Party

Megan turned 6 a whole 3 months ago, and I'm just now sitting down to blog about it.  Sorry, Megan!  We have been telling Megan for a few years, anytime she begged, that she could have her first "kid party" when she was in kindergarten.  As much fun as she had attending friends' birthday parties while in preschool, I knew we had to set some hard and fast rules in this area for our family.  Kids parties can be expensive, so we decided to wait until the big 6th birthday, when grammar school (and possible lifelong) friendships have been forged, and when our girls can appreciate the party a little more.

Needless to say, the anticipation levels were high as we set out to determine our theme and location for this party.  Megan had several ideas, but I slyly persuaded her to have the party at our house.  (Here's your foreshadowing:  What was I thinking??!!)  I thought it would be fun and inexpensive to play some old-fashioned games, eat some birthday cake, bash a pinata and call it a day.  And have a rainbow theme.  So, I not-so-inconspicuously began pinning fun rainbow party ideas on Pinterest.  If it were my full-time job to plan this party, it would have been the best rainbow party ever.  But, alas, I barely manage to do the breakfast dishes on a daily basis while corralling five girlies.  So, after sending invitations to the 18 girls in Megan's kindergarten class, I set to work paring down my list of ideas to a select few. 

As great as the ideas on Pinterest were, my best idea was making sure Mop was in town for this production.  I honestly don't know how this would have happened without her!!  She helped with our first project for the party: our rainbow window art.  I saw this, and thought we could do a rainbow instead.  The girls loved this activity!  We cut up a ton of tissue paper into little squares, in every color of the rainbow, and then drew a rainbow on our large dining room window with a dry erase marker. The girls filled in each section of the rainbow with the appropriate color tissue paper after we painted a layer of Mod Podge with a paintbrush.

The end result is below.  This rainbow stayed on the window for a few weeks after the party, mostly because I was unsure how to take it all down.  Luckily, we discovered that scraping it off with a razor blade is super easy.  This was so fun and festive.  I'm already thinking of what we can Mod Podge to the window for Christmas :)

My next Pinterest steal?  I bought a case of little water bottles, with the intent of creating little juices in all of the colors of the rainbow.  Mop painstakingly rubbed off all of the labels, and we very carefully added just the right color and amount of Kool-Aid to each bottle.  We were pretty proud of ourselves, and couldn't wait for the little party guests to help themselves to their favorite color drink.

We forgot one very important ingredient, though --- sugar!  This became obvious as soon as the girls arrived at the party.  They were just as excited as we were about the drinks, but their excitement quickly faded. One by one, they would take a sip, grimace, and politely ask for water.  Oops!  In my defense, I've never made Kool-Aid before, and I didn't realize you needed to add sugar in addition to the powder in the pouch.  Lesson learned!  We were very fortunate that Uncle Kyle was at the party that day, too.  He went out on an emergency juice box run and saved the day!

Not all of my Pinterest finds were a bust, though.  These rainbow fruit kabobs worked out really well!!  I served these along with homemade mac and cheese and hot dogs for the girls' dinner, and they were gobbled up!

As for the games, Matt manned Pin the Pot of Gold on the End of the Rainbow, with some crowd control assistance from Uncle Kyle.  He started with individual pots labeled with each girl's name, and and it was easy to see who won at the end.  This game was a hit!

Next, we played musical chairs while waiting for the mac and cheese that took forever to cook! I'm pretty sure Megan loved this game!  Can you tell?

Bridget (far left below) hung with the big girls with this game, too.  It was so cute! She actually made it to the final three girls in the showdown for the last seats.  

A game that did not work as well was Pictionary on the girls' white board easel.  I didn't think that one through very thoroughly.  We lasted one round before one of Megan's classmates stormed off dramatically, and exited up the stairs with a haughty, "This game is too hard.  I quit."  Of course, we lost at least ten more girls who decided it was too hard as well, and they ran out to the backyard to play on the baby swings.  We lost some control of the party at that point.  I am so thankful this was a drop-off party, and there were no other parents there to witness our lack of kid party know-how ;)  Chuck E. Cheese was looking like such a better option right about then!

Finally, though, it was cake time!!  And time for another Pinterest idea, of course!  I decided to make a rainbow cake...a multi-layered cake with a different color in each layer.  The many versions I had seen online made this look like a piece of cake, literally, and beautiful to boot.  So, in my typical party prep fashion, I waited until about 11pm the night before to start baking...and baking...and baking.  What I would have given for a few more 9-inch round baking pans that night!  And maybe someone standing over my shoulder telling me to shave each layer with a serrated knife before stacking.  

The final product was not at all pretty, and the icing I made was too thin.  It looked more like a rainbow volcano than a rainbow cake.  But, any points lost in it's presentation were made up for by the wow factor of eating a rainbow!

 

When all was said and done, I think we did a respectable job for first-timers.  Megan had a blast, which is the most important thing, as did Tessa and Annie, who turned 3 the day of the party, thus leading them to think that this party was for them as well ;)  Even now, months later, the twins will see Megan's friends from school and say, "Oh, look!  There's my friend.  She came to our rainbow party!" Three birds.  One stone.  

But, considering that we have many, many more "friend parties" in our family's future, and since we're always trying to fine tune things around here, we'll keep these rules in mind for the next go-round:

• Never under-estimate a large group of little girls, even if you have five of your own and think you know everything about little girls ;)

• Have an itinerary.  Little girls can sniff out even the slightest bit of "winging" you may be tempted to pull.  

• Taste anything you plan to serve, and don't forget the sugar!