fancy rainbow birthday

I love a good theme party. For my daughter's fourth birthday we let her pick the theme. She went mad with power and wanted a Fancy (as in Nancy) Rainbow Picnic party. That kid is going to turn out ok!

I let her get dressed up as fancy as possible and then took some photos - this is the one we used on the invitation.

We set up two long tables end-to-end in the back courtyard, and covered them with staggered plastic tablecloths to create a rainbow effect. We made tissue paper poms and hung them from monofilament to add some color to the festivities.

Most importantly, we asked everyone to dress fancy. 

 

We served lunch and tried to keep the rainbow theme going with layered rainbow jello parfaits, rainbow fruit skewers, and of course a rainbow-on-the-inside layer cake. The jello was more work than you'd think, since you had to wait for each layer to set up.

The cake, on the other hand, was surprisingly easy. I doubled my favorite recipe for white cake, then divided the batter into six portions, colored each a different color, and baked. Let cool, layer and frost like usual. It was fun to cut into such an ordinary-looking cake and find this burst of color!

I didn't want to plan too many activities, I find that with young kids they are just thrilled to be together. We did have some fancy accessories on hand to get our glamour on. And the one crafty thing we did was make these fabulous hats - super easy and the kids loved them. I bought solid color wrapping paper and we cut it out in big squares, then used the bottom of a wine chiller as a form. Wrap some tape around it and you have a big, floppy, dramatic hat. I had a pile of ribbons, lace, flowers, etc. they used to embellish them.