Rainbow Themed Birthday Party

Another birthday has come and gone. My sister gave me the idea for a rainbow themed party. She called it Somewhere Over the Rainbow, like in Wizard of Oz. I ended up just going with rainbow everything!

Rainbow colored cupcakes were far easier to make than the many rainbow cake recipes I came across. I used Family Fun's recipe.

I used glass dishes to make the colored cake mix. The coffee didn't go with the recipe, however I'd highly recommend it for a beverage to accompany you while making these cupcakes. It will ensure that you stay awake while adding the batter.

 My daughter gave me the idea to roll the edges is springkles too. They were pretty when finished.

  

I ordered everything I could find in rainbow on Oriental Trading. The bandanas were a huge hit. The sunglasses and suckers were fun too! I also ordere rainbow crayons that the kids had fun drawing with.

The birthday girl is on the right. They had a ton of fun!

I bough the rainbow colored licorice at a local store. Not pictured are the many rainbow balloons that were hung up over the island.

 The birthday girl recieved a new bike for her birthday! It was a big surprise and now that she has been without training wheels for sometime, it was time to upgrade to a big girl bike. She won't be riding barefoot or without a helmet though. :)

The rainbow party was a success thanks to my sister's inspiration.

Valentine's Crayons

For Valentine's day my kids made crayon hearts to give to their classmates.  We took our old crayons and removed the outside paper from them. Then broke them into pieces and put them into the plastic mold.

 

After breaking the crayons into the mold, I baked them on a metal pan at 250 degrees for about 20 minutes. As soon as they looked entirely melted I pulled them out of the oven and let them cool. Once cooled, they popped right out super easily.

The next step involved gluing the hearts to a piece of card stock paper that said, "You color my world!". I used the hot glue gun, which seemed to do the trick nicely. The kids enjoyed the process and the Valentine's were a big hit. This inspiration came from Family Fun! 

Lego Birthday Party

This years birthday party for my son was a Lego theme! My son loves Legos!

We dumped all his Legos on the table and had a pile of his creation books available for kids to build whatever they wanted. It was a great table decoration and the kids played for hours.

 

Homemade chocolate cupcakes with Lego pieces as the topping was an easy dessert.

I found lots of inspiration for this type of theme. I got the invitations and coloring books from Cleo Livin' Life blog site. Check them out here. 

 

You can see the coloring books in this picture. They turned out pretty cool and were easy to assemble with my sewing machine. 

Overall the party was fun and it turned out to be an easy theme to pull off. 

Some other good ideas included: 

Wrapping juice boxes to look like Legos.

Game ideas from Homemaking Fun blog.

I'm so glad my son liked the Lego idea in the first place! 

Movie Themed Birthday Party

A Cinema Sign

My daughter celebrated her 5th birthday in September! I threw her a movie themed birthday. I borrowed a large projector screen and projector, which we connected to our own surround sound DVD player. The featured movie was the newest Tinkerbell Movie.

 We set up the basement with maroon curtains borrowed from my mom's house. This helped with the theme and darkened the room.

 I set up a table with rope lights for the kids to purchase candy, popcorn, drinks, and bags of licorice with chocolate covered raisins.

 Each item they purchased had a price in tickets. The ticket price was written in both number form and visually displayed with the tickets themselves. This helped for the really little kids that couldn't read the price. 

 The popcorn bags were just paper lunch sacks cut with pinking shears, my mom's idea. Then I found these popcorn coasters in the 50 cent Michaels store bin. I glued them on the bags ahead of time.

 When the guests arrived, their movie ticket and the tickets they used to buy the food and drink items were in an envelope. The envelopes were in alphabetical order for my kids to hand out to the guests at the Will Call counter.

 Once it was time to start the movie showing, I had the kids purchase their movie snacks and line up in the stairwell until the ticket taker was ready. My friend, Nicole, loaned me the dark black curtains at the bottom of the stairs so that the kids couldn't see the theater until it was time. They entered through the curtain, handed off their movie ticket and then found a seat in the theater.

 I purchased large posters of different movies. I had Staples print these for me in black and white. They were quite large and only cost me $1.99 each poster. The picture frame on the left was purchased at Micheals. I created scrapbook like letters of my daughter's name and slid them into the frame.

 The kids had such a great time. My favorite part was when the kids continually said, "this is the best party I've ever been too". That was icing on the cake. My son now wants to know what movie we will be showing for his party. I haven't told him that I don't throw the same party twice. We might have to use Family Fun's movie night as a drive-in them for him.

Wild Wild West Party

My son wanted a western themed birthday party so of course I did my best to pull that theme together. In the picture, is my kids with grandma Dee testing out the saddle.

I visited a few websites first. Family Fun and Radmacher blog had some cute ideas.
 
HP had a ton of free printable ideas with the western theme in mind:
Western printable kit  (includes customizable boot invites, signs, games, and more)
Western scrapabook kit (borders, backgrounds, journal blocks, and tags)

Wild West Party set 1 (mustache stickers, wanted posters, stage coach invites, and more)
Wild West Party set 2 (iron on, badges, invites, and more)

HP has other themed party, decorations, tags, etc. Here is the link I found to be filled with amazing printables!
HP Creative Studio   Enjoy!

Now back to the party I put together.I found sheriff badges, gold coins, and mini decks of cards to put in the gift bags. Thanks to my mom for putting all these together and having the idea for the napkin rings. Most of my decor items came from her too. Thanks mom!

The napkins were bandannas with small western hats glued to hair ties for napkin rings.

Centerpieces were straw cowboy hats, red bandannas, candles with ripped bandannas tied around them, along with horseshoes. Here's my birthday cowboy next to one of them.

Under my welcome sign, I hung the buckaroos sign, which I made with my cricut. In doorways, we hung strings with boots, badges, cactus', etc. These we found at the local Party America store.

Outside, we set up a cowboy fire pit, saddle, and roping station. To our luck it snowed during the party so we came in and out a lot, but I did have extra gloves handy and hats too. The steer head on the hay bale was a fun game while kids sat on the saddle.

You can see in the background some rope with strips of bandannas strung across the front of the house. This was an easy way to make garland. I had extra strips so I hung a few on the wreath that was still on my front door and added a few horse shoes too.

Here's the homemade stand with the saddle. Thanks to my father-in-law for doing so much of the outdoor work. He brought the hay bales too.I couldn't have thrown the party together without all the help.

The menu:
Cowboy cocoa, root beer, hot dogs, buns, chili, cheese, calico beans, ribs, chips, and veggies.
For dessert, we made smores over the fire pit outside instead of cake! It was a huge hit because the kids could make them.

It was a successful 6th birthday party and a ton of fun for me to put together. Good thing my daughter's next party isn't until September.  This will give me some planning time.