A Rainbow Party

Bruiser’s 4th Birthday Bash was celebrated rainbow style this year. After vetoing a castle party (because Monkey just did that) and a truck party (because his 2nd and 3rd birthday’s were truck parties), we agreed on rainbows. I’m not really even sure how it came up, but it sure was a fun party to plan!

I got nearly all my ideas from the wonderful Pinterest. You can find links to these ideas on Cam’s Rainbow Party board.

For Bruiser, a birthday party is built around cake first and games second. This cake was cooked in 1/2 pint canning jars so you could see all the lovely rainbow colors.

Here it is after the batter was scooped in.

And this is what they looked like right out of the oven:

I cut off the tops so they were level with the jar after they had cooled and topped them with white frosting and rainbow sprinkles. (All the tops were saved and later cut into cubes topped with vanilla pudding and cool whip for a treat the next day).

I made a rainbow fruit tray for snacking:

Painted a birthday sign with colored condensed milk. Say what? Uh huh, condensed milk. Yes, another Pinterest idea. It stays shiny even after it’s dry, and it’s also a bit raised. Very cool non-toxic paint. The kids kept licking their fingers while painting their projects. =)

The rainbow shirt was a lucky Kid’s Stuff Sale find and those balloons in the drink container are filled with ice to keep everything cool. (That didn’t end up working as expected. They had a lot of flat sides and some the balloons tore.)

The yarn balloons worked out OK. The blue one totally fell apart. Not sure what happened there. I was going to string them together to make a banner with them, but since I only had 5 that worked it didn’t look quite right. Since we had 5 fan blades, I stuck them up there.

Decorations up, food prepared, now we just wait for the guests.

I had 2 games that I modified from other game ideas.

The first was Rainbow Bingo.

Rainbow Bingo was played in two parts. The first part was to construct the board by spelling out “rainbow” across the top. I blew up a set of rainbow colored balloons for each kid and inside the balloons were little square letters. Boy oh boy do I wish I had taken a picture of the boys room filled with 30 colored balloons strewn across the floor!

Anyhow, they had to go in ROYGBIV order and pop one balloon at a time and find the letter inside. The red balloon had the letter “R”, orange balloon had “A”, yellow had “I”, etc…to spell the word “rainbow.” After each letter was retrieved (I gave them bamboo skewers to help pop the balloons) they were to run back to the table and glue it onto their paper until it looked like this:

After all the cards were complete, we started the bingo part of the game. Using Skittles and M&M’s as markers, I called out a color and number for them to mark. The winner was the first one to make one straight horizontal line across the page. . . a rainbow!

We ended up with a tie for winner, but by far the best part was eating their markers at the end!

I made the game for up to six players and I made it so that you can get your own copy to play! Download the PDF here.

The second game was a rainbow scavenger hunt. Another twist on an old classic. Each kid picked one of the seven colors. (It just so happened that there were seven kids at the party!) I tied a piece of yarn around their wrist so they wouldn’t forget their color. (Four-year olds are not the best rememberers especially in the midst of a fun party!)

Starting with a picture clue that I gave them (very zoomed in images of common household items) they were to find the matching thing in the house and look for a painted paper towel tube which would have the next clue. Only the kid with that color string was allowed to touch the tube, but they all could help look for the next clue.

Above is Sport’s mom getting the first tube since Sport wasn’t too into playing this game. (Bad Sport!) You can see me off to the side holding the multi-colored tube that had the initial clue. After red, comes orange, which was Bruiser’s color so he checks out the next picture…looks like they’ll be off to the oven next!

After games, we enjoyed some good food and then opened the gifts. Here Monkey reads the card he made to Bruiser.

The best part was saved for last. Finally, CAKE TIME!!!

It may look like an angry face, but I can assure you it was not. The cake was a hit!

It was right about this time that Bud woke up from his miracle nap. That boy slept a good two hours through a bunch of screaming four- and five-year-olds. Thank you baby!

After the party was officially over, the grown-ups hung out and the kids made their own fun. For Bruiser, it was cleaning up the rest of the rainbow fruit,

for the girls it was….

…poking holes through the plastic tablecloth with toothpicks.

Silly kids!

After everyone went home and the Chief was zonked on the couch (he was such a great chef, game helper, baby watcher, and all-around awesome assistant), I asked Monkey and Bruiser to come and take a picture with me.

I wanted a sweet one of Bruiser and me by his sign. Monkey took the shot. Bruiser insisted that we kiss.

How I just LOVE this little guy!

Monkey, of course, wanted to be in a picture too. So I handed Bruiser the camera, Bud crawled over to join us, and we got posed just how Monkey instructed.

Well, Monkey’s in the picture, but only just barely!

Perhaps one of the sweetest moments came about eight hours after the party began. I walked in the kitchen to start cleaning up and found the two brothers testing out Bruiser’s new walkie-talkies.

Sitting only two feet away from each other, munching on the remainder of the food, and having the best time just enjoying each other’s company. It was a very sweet way to end an amazing day!