Party time!

I think our house has finally recovered from party mode.  Peyton turned 5 a couple weeks ago and we celebrated with 2 parties.  A family one and a friend party, we also took cupcakes to preschool.  Her theme this year was rainbows.  She gets very into picking a theme and generally starts thinking about it right after Halloween.  I had to nix a couple before we reached rainbows.  Barbie and the 3 Musketeers seemed a bit hard to work out! :)  I'll spare everyone the full birthday experience and just share the crafting and baking highlights!

For the family party I really wanted to make a cake incorporating these two ideas from pinterest.  (here and here)  It turned out well, I learned that cake balls are a bit more time consuming than I prefer, and if you cover a cake with sprinkles it is quite crunchy.   :)

She got lots of great gifts and had a fun day with her family.  My Mom made her this cool Dick and Jane quilt which is perfect as she is learning to read.  

I made her a veil to go with the Rapunzel wedding dress she got.  The veil is from this tutorial and it was really easy.  Much better than the piece of fabric she had been using.  

 Her cupcakes for preschool were these great ice cream cupcakes.  I remember taking these to school as a kid but had forgotten until I saw this reminder over at Make it and Love it!
A bit hard to transport but worth it!

  Finally for her friend party I wanted to make rainbow cupcakes, you know the ones where you layer all the dyed batter.  It is super time consuming and my husband thought I was nuts, but the final product was SO AWESOME!  Even better was how cool the kids thought it was.

Here are a few more shots of the cupcakes.  Let me also say that the rest of the pictures in the post were taken by my great friend Erica, I have lots to learn about photography from her!

Along with the cupcakes I made a fruit tray from an idea on Pinterest.  The little bowl is for the bananas I put them in last minute so they didn't get all brown and gross.   With 10 kids and 4 Mommas, there wasn't a single piece of fruit left over.

I wanted to make a craft with the kids, but wanted it to be pretty easy and not too messy.  I used this pin as my idea.  They had so much fun and created some great rainbow suns.  I just loved the variety in the final product.  

And what kind of party would it be without some games?  Peyton loves games but some of her friends don't share her level of competitiveness.  I decided to give a little prize to everyone when they were out of each game rather than having a winner each time.  The kids loved that and it made everything go smoothly.  We played hot potato using a rainbow pillow for the kids to pass, musical rugs (not enough chairs for 10 kids), and pin the pot of gold on the rainbow.

Parties are fun but I'm glad to be back to normal around here.  I don't know what I'd do without Pinterest for party ideas these days.  :)  So far 5 has been very fun.  She's changing fast!  She even has a loose tooth to prove it.  Guess I'll need to add a tooth pillow to my long list of sew projects!