On January 14, my baby turned five. She was absolutely determined that she wanted to have a rainbow birthday party, so I tried my hardest to see her vision. Six months ago, I started looking for cake inspiration. I found it on Marthastewart.com.
I knew this would be the perfect cake. With the cake decided, I pushed the party to the back of my mind, but not for long. When I discovered Pinterest, I discovered a very easy way to find inspiration that would have taken me much longer just searching the internet. Off I went in search of inspiration. Here are a few things I found:
( source)
(source)
With some rough ideas, I planned what I would need. Normally, I would have started buying things for her party in the two weeks before Christmas. Lucky us, the entire family ended up with a tummy bug during that time so no shopping for me. I was forced to wait until after New Year's so my options were a bit limited when I went out for some things.
Now, Boo knows what colors are in a rainbow and that they total seven, not six. I had to be careful in picking things so it would have all of the correct colors. For the items I couldn't, I explained it really was the best I could do and she seemed to except it. Mostly. After some
grumbling.
Since I did not originally plan to post this on the blog, I did not take pictures as I went. I apologize now and I will from now on.
The day of the party came much more quickly than I had expected. Living in the south means our weather can be anything in the winter. The Saturday before we had a sunny day with temperatures above 70. Luckily, the day of her party it was sunny and in the upper 50's. That meant the kids were able to burn off that energy outside for a while. It was much better that the day of her first birthday party when it snowed! Like I said, crazy winter weather.
Lets start with the cake. I had only looked at the inspiration picture and did not follow any special instructions. I am bad about just going with instinct. Sometimes it turns out beautiful, sometimes I look at it and think I should really have followed some directions. Well, the cake kind of falls in to both of those categories. I chose to do my cake with my ten inch pans to ensure I had enough cake for all the kids and the parents. I bought seven cake mixes (well eight if you count that I always get an extra in case I mess up) and went to work. I mixed in the color for each layer and over the next six hours ended up with seven different color cakes. I realized right away that I didn't need a whole mix for each color, but I kept going. knowing that I had intended to level the layers down anyway. The extra would give me a second cake to go to in case something happened to a layer. I leveled my layers down to be one inch high. Plenty small enough, right? We will get to that later. I started making my icing. I went with my go to buttercream. I use all butter in it, delicious. After I made 18 cups of icing, I started in on the cake. This had to be the easiest cake I have ever iced. I did not have to tint any of it since the cake was the color. Each layer went on the next easily with a layer of buttercream between. I already knew that I wasn't going to be doing the completely smooth cake Martha had, my cake was going to look like a cloud (I used a Wilton #8 tip). When I finished, the cake was almost nine inches tall. That was not my intention. I realized then that my layers could have gone as small as half inch and I made a mental note of this for the future. I took a picture of the cake at this stage.
This is when I went to move the cake to the cake stand I had made. I could barely lift the thing it was so heavy. Again, smaller layers are better. With my husband's help, we moved it to the cake stand I had made. It promptly broke the stand, which was a 12 inch round piece of styrofoam that I had turned into a tutu (see inspiration photo above) and duct taped to the bottom of one of my glass cakestands (I was using the large portion of the stand as the base thinking it would give more stability, silly me). Luckily our hands were still under the cake and we were able to rescue it from damage (whew). After trying to readjust the foam back on to the plate, we gave up and set the foam right on the table with the tutu fanning out around it. In the end, it looked like that was how it was intended all along.
Doesn't it look like I intended it to be like this? During the party I just didn't mention that it was supposed to be standing. Notice the tablecloth? It is supposed to mimic the sky. I bought some white placemats to be clouds and bought cups, plates and utensils in all the rainbow colors.
My husband believes that I have OCD and bought these things to be in this particular order on purpose. Nope, my OCD had me buy them like this completely without my knowledge. I didn't even realize I had done it until I set them out. See those Hershey Kisses? Have a closer look.
Aren't they cute? They match the invitations I made for her. I just made small images, printed them on to sticker paper and punched them out with a 3/4 inch round punch. These turned out to be a big hit and I have a lot of requests to make some for their occasions.
I also made some sky to go along with the cake.
I did not follow the directions posted in my source above. I made up six batches of blue jello and let it set in the refrigerator. After it was set, I stirred it up to break it into small pieces. My husband piped Cool Whip onto the sides of the cups and I just spooned the jello in. Very easy. For the piping, I just used a disposable piping bag, but I am sure a baggie would work just as well.
The thank you bags were also very simple to make. I just used brown lunch bags (I couldn't find my stash of white, bad organization skills) and cut the tops with craft scissors to give a cloud-like appearance. I then used yarn I had leftover from making Boo a rainbow scarf (see it there in the picture) to tie each bag in holes I punched with a standard hole punch.
I wish you could see the ends of the scarf, there are little clouds on the ends. These bags were stored under the table until the end of the party and this table was used for gifts.
The craft I had the kids do during the party was that lovely ring with the ribbons hanging from it. I chose not to get bells, and I had a hard time trying to find the same type ribbon in each color. Finally I found a sheer ribbon at Hobby Lobby in all the right colors. This is the example I made for the kids to see. I wish I could have found a wider ribbon to fill the ring a bit more. I had already bought those rings at an earlier date from Hobby Lobby. I try to buy when things are on sale.
My daughter wanted a rainbow skirt tow ear dring the party. I found this fabric at Hancock and with the help of a friend, made a simple little skirt. The t-shirt came from Walmart and I sewed on the buttons tat I had found at Hobby Lobby. It turned out cute. Doesn't she look happy?
I will spare you the rest of the party photos. Oh wait! did you see the cake as it was cut? Maybe just two more shots then. Here is Boo blowing out her candles with Daddy's help.
And here is the cut cake!
