Happy birthday (observed)

Today we celebrated Alaina's birthday with friends in Stillwater. I often spontaneously call her my sunshine rainbow baby or sunshine kid so a rainbow theme seemed really appropriate. It turns out that rainbows are all the rage these days so I certainly had tons of ideas from Pinterest. We wanted to make her birthday special but didn't want to spend a lot of money so that meant making lots of stuff myself (with the help of some crafty friends!). It was a little crazy trying to get it all done while working full-time and with the birthday girl herself...but I started a few weeks ago and that helped. However, this weekend was crazy with the last minute details. Somehow having a baby has given me a little more patience. I didn't get really stressed until about noon today. That's progress for me. :) I'm going to document the party so this will be a long, picture-heavy post so our friends and family who are far away can feel like they got to experience it. Sorry some of the pictures are blurry or overexposed. They are cell phone quality and the lighting was a little weird.

I had a lot of fun creating Alaina's birthday party invitation. I am not particularly fancy so I just used PowerPoint and google images to create something that reminded me of invitations I liked on Etsy.

We included a little card noting that gifts weren't necessary but folks could bring a donation for us to take over to Wings of Hope. I am excited to take things over, hopefully later this week.

All of the food, drinks, and decorations were rainbow themed, of course. We had fruit and veggies, rainbow cupcakes, rainbow goldfish, blue chips and salsa, fruity pebbles pops, and decorative jars with M&Ms and skittles. You can also see Alaina's little rainbow smash cake(s).

For drinks, I labeled water bottles with rainbow colors that said "Happy birthday, Alaina!" and I made magic rainbow soda by putting koolaid ice cubes in Sprite. The colors and flavors changed as the ice melted. It was actually really, really yummy and looked cool, too.

    

                  

My friend, Ricki, made this amazing rainbow tutu to decorate Alaina's high chair. I loved how it turned out!

On the favor table, I also included a "guest book" for families to sign. I used the book What Makes a Rainbow which I randomly found on Amazon. It is ridiculously adorable with each page being a different color of the rainbow, with ribbons stretching through each page, and a big rainbow popup at the end. It was pretty much perfect.

In the big kid favor bags, we put rainbow colored play dough, silly straws, and bubbles. I used special little labels for them to fit the theme. I also found a couple of cute coloring sheets with rainbows that I printed off to put inside (amazing what you can find for free on google!).

The play dough and silly straws didn't really seem baby-appropriate so I made separate favor bags for the little kids. I forgot to snap a picture of their contents but they included the bubbles, some rainbow colored foam bath toys, a couple of bright mini inflatable beach balls, and a mini-version of the What Makes a Rainbow book. 

We also had licorice rainbows and a place for the bigger kids to craft fruit loop necklaces.

I'm a little disappointed that I forgot to take a picture of Alaina's rainbow balloon banner. It was pretty cool looking (I made a slightly smaller version of this). It took quite a bit of time to complete (partly because I am somewhat inept at tying balloons!) but was actually surprisingly easy.

The cake was actually sort of a nightmare. While I love to bake, I'm kind of a disaster just waiting to happen. Fortunately, I know this about myself and tend to be fully prepared for whatever hilarious calamity tries to strike. I've decided that if I ever write a cookbook, it should be titled Baking: Comedy and Tragedy. Originally I was thinking something like Baking 911 but it turns out someone has already written that book (though I will say, that book looks more like how to prevent kitchen nightmares rather than how to deal with them as they are occurring, which happens to be my expertise).

Anyhow, here is the cake. Looks fine, right? Well...sort of fine?

Yea...not so much. That cake almost didn't make it to the party! I may devote an entire blog to this cake at some point. Last night, Chad wanted me to give up on it a number of times, suggesting there was no way to salvage it. I stubbornly kept pushing forward, thinking at the very least, I could make cake balls or a cake trifle (neither are very birthday-y, though) or something with it. I was pretty proud of myself when I got the cake frosted and decorated this morning and thought it didn't look "too bad." How to transport it became the next big drama. No lid would fit on top of it! Ricki and I transported it to the party by me holding it in my lap, holding my breath and shifting the weight with every bump or turn and with Ricki driving slowly and trying not to laugh at the image we both had of me landing face first in buttercream. I was super excited when we made it there and the cake was doing awesome. But once I got it inside, I noticed...it was about to topple to the left. At any second, it might come crashing down. I was a little morbidly curious what would happen. But Ricki had the brilliant suggestion of putting it in the refrigerator with a bit of scaffolding provided by some well placed groceries. So we just kept it refrigerated until cake cutting time and that worked.

So it didn't fall over prematurely. And the results were well worth it, I thought. Plus who doesn't love cake? Even crooked cake is still tasty cake.

And the crumbs were like confetti!

Overall, the party was a lot of fun! We really enjoyed getting to watch Alaina play with all of the kids and we are so thankful for our friends in Stillwater who make Oklahoma feel more like home.

Alaina loved hanging out with her new friend, Davis. It was so cute watching them share the pit balls and Davis loves to hug as much as Alaina does!

She's always happy to share.

And how cute are these cupcake bloomers?? Lori made her bloomers and her special birthday onesie! We are crazy about them.

One of Alaina's birthday presents was a ball tent that just happened to be rainbow colored so of course I had to bring it with us. Miss Audrey liked it!

Even the big kids liked playing in it! 

 How cute is this picture of Alaina and Leo holding hands??

More hugs from Davis.

All the little babies hanging out.

When it was time for the cake, Alaina really didn't understand what the fuss was all about. It's like she was thinking, "why is everyone just staring at me? I usually am more interested in watching others. Okay, so you sang a song...now what?"

 

She still wasn't sure what to do.

So she pushed the cake over and just looked at it for awhile.

But she did finally figure out she could eat it, especially once everyone stopped staring at her expectantly. 

So all and all it was a really great day. Alaina had a lot of fun playing today. Chad and I had a really amazing time and are so thankful for this sweet little girl and the people who love her. She was super exhausted when she got home. She fell asleep very quickly after her bath! We are right behind her!