Rainbow

Last Thursday, my daughter turned four. We had her party on the 14th, as it was the only weekend we had to do it all month! Lucky for me, my little asked to have a Rainbow themed birthday and I was pumped. There were about a million options to choose from for what I could do, and even more fabulous, it wasn’t going to cost a lot. Here’s some pics of how I threw together a rainbow party for my little miss, with lots of help from my tall hubs!

The rainbow ceiling was by far the biggest challenge of the decorations. It wasn’t that difficult to actually do, it just took a lot of time. But totally worth it. It’s still up in our kitchen! We used streamers and white balloons from the dollar store, and that’s it! In fact, including the plates, cups, and plastic tablecloths, the total cost of the party stuff was less than $20.

We decided to have a rainbow brunch for everyone attending, simply because it sounded like fun! The top image is the table area (pre-food) and next is where the main food/drink area was located. The menu consisted of sausage, turkey bacon, rainbow waffles and rainbow pancakes. Drinks included ‘Birthday Punch’, OJ, and water & milk for anyone that wanted any.

Rainbow waffles are so fabulous. I had a picture of the pancakes too, but apparently I deleted it in the shuffle. Poop.

For the table spread we had a fruit rainbow and a veggie rainbow. Fruit consisted of strawberries, oranges, mango, green grapes, blueberries, and blackberries. The veggies had cherry tomatoes, carrots, yellow pepper slices, broccoli, and what SHOULD have been purple cauliflower. BUT, all stores in my area decided they all had to be out of stock of purple cauliflower just in time for this party!! So we substituted blue corn chips instead. You do what you can.

For the ‘centerpiece’ if you will (besides the cupcakes) was the yearly birthday photo I make. I use my favorite photo of her from the family photoshoot, and list her favorite things all around. Below is the actual image. I blurred our her name as I never use it online. I’m aware that in reality, that probably doesn’t do much ‘protection’-wise, but it makes my mom brain feel better. 🙂

The rainbow cupcakes (a necessity at a rainbow party) are actually super easy to make – click here for the tutorial!

I spiffed up our entryway chalkboard sign with a fun little rainbow birthday message!

And of course, the obligatory OM NOM NOM cupcake shot. She got this winter hat as a gift and loved it – kept it on the whole party in fact!

Overall, it was a super successful party! I like to do a lot with decor and such as my little’s birthday is so close to Christmas. Which means that every year, the house is always decorated fully for the holidays, and I never want her to feel like her birthday gets the backseat to Christmas! Therefore, she picks her own theme and we accommodate. Plus, now we have a fabulous rainbow kitchen ceiling for awhile! 🙂

A quick blog update – I finally added some new work to the Pure Inspiration page – please go take a look, there is so much awesome art there! Hopefully there will be more soon – I need to carve out a chunk of my time in August dedicated to finding more awesome art!

This past Sunday I celebrated one of my dearest friends 25th birthday. She’s now joined me in the Quarter of a Century Club. We’ve been best friends since we were 11 – it’s crazy to think that it’s been 14 years!! Anywho, I just had to make her some rainbow cupcakes – I’ve been dying to try them out. They’re a little time consuming, but extremely easy to do, and so much fun to look at when they’re finished! So let’s dive right in.

Ingredients

1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup butter (I use a vegetable oil spread, and it works just fine)
2 eggs
2tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups flour
1 3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup milk (I ended up adding a couple tablespoons more for a better consistency)
Icing dyes in all the colors of the rainbow (I would definitely use icing dyes, NOT standard food coloring. These give you extremely vibrant color, whereas regular food color comes out very dull I find)

In a small bowl, whisk flour and baking powder together.

In a larger bowl, mix butter and sugar

and whisk until creamy.

Add in eggs and vanilla.

Mix until smooth.

Add half your flour and milk, and stir until combined.

Add in the remaining halves of the flour and milk, then stir until thoroughly combined. If your batter is a bit thick (mine was at this point) add in milk until desired consistency is reached.

Divide batter into six bowls. (I busted out my camping bowls in case the icing dye stained the bowls – it did not just as an FYI.)

Mix in about 1/8 -1/4 tsp of each color dye and combine thoroughly.

Lay a layer of your violet batter on the bottom, making sure it spreads to the edges of the cups. (I use silicone cups as they are reusable – less waste and saves money!). Then, keep layering each color on top in backwards rainbow order (ie; blue next, then green, etc). I used about a half tablespoon for each layer.

All the colors layered in – ready for the oven.
Bake at 350F for 20 – 25 minutes.
Let cool completely before frosting them!

The finished product! So vibrant – I just love them.

Ready to eat!
Unfortunately I was in a super rush when these were done and I totally forgot to take pictures of them all together before frosting them. DOH. Also, as you may have noticed, I didn’t have my little miss help with these. Although the dye doesn’t stain dishes, it absolutely does stain skin and clothes (I looked like I dipped my hand in a rainbow at the end of this). And while I don’t mind mess, that’s pushing it! So I’d leave the little ones out of this recipe. These do not stain once baked though, so you don’t have to worry about rainbow teeth!

So as you can see, these are pretty simple and just SO CUTE! If my little miss has an art party for her birthday theme this year, I’m totally making them again. They are just vibrant and fun.

The party was totally stellar, as always. A great gathering of friends, with some great food to boot. The birthday girl is into archery, so she had a course set up for her archer friends to shoot with her, and I tagged along for photo ops.

The birthday girl being a total badass.