this year was a particularly difficult year to plan mimi's birthday. after rob's dad became terminally ill, i didnt think it was good time for a party for mimi and her friends, so we decided it was best to skip a party this year and just have a quiet family dinner out. then after dad passed and we slowly started to get back into our routines again, we all began to feel bad about not having a party for mimi, so we decided to have a party after all...although, a much belated party.mimi said she really wanted to have a party here at the house. she really really really wanted it here, so i told her she could, if she kept it small. since she was turning seven, i allowed her to invite seven friends.
then i tasked her with thinking up a theme, and she finally settled on a favorite book series of hers called Rainbow Magic. how perfect...each of the book sets in the series showcases 7 fairies, whether they be the rainbow fairies, the gem fairies, the party fairies, the pet fairies, fairy fairy yada yada ad nauseum...if it exists, Daisy Meadows has probably assigned a fairy to it. so after discussing it with mimi, we decided it would be fun to make each party guest one of the 7 rainbow fairies (and she would be a special birthday fairy). in keeping with the story (in every book Jack Frost is out to ruin Fairyland in some way or another) we thought it would be fun to plan activities to keep Jack Frost from ruining her party!
THE INVITATIONS
so first things first...we narrowed down the guest list to seven friends (really difficult to do when you want to invite everyone you've ever crossed paths with). finally, Mimi's Seven were selected, and i started making the invitations with images i found online. they started out being fairly simple with two dimensional fairies on the front, but then later evolved into a more complicated design by including the idea of Magic Color (there's a whole book series) where the images are B&W but when you pull the tab they magically fill w/color. (see video demonstration).
(apparently the girls LOVED this when they got their invitations. the parents had lots of nice things to say about them). one parent asked how i did it. the answer of course: FAIRY MAGIC! lol. no, j/k. i used ink jet transparency paper. printed the color image, put a sheet of transparency over the image. traced the lines, then put it in my copier and made copies onto transparency film (two easily fit on one sheet). a sheet of white cardstock sandwiched btwn the transparency image and the color image, divides the two images, so when you pull it out, the color images comes out from behind the white cardstock! i had to create a 'case' to hold the images in, and 'lock' the end so it didnt come out completely. **UPDATE: i added some links at the bottom of the post for tutorials on these color fill slider cards**
Seven Colors of the Rainbow
Seven Friends to join the Fun
It's Mimi's Seventh Birthday
Her Seventh time around the Sun,
But beware Jack Frost
Who'll turn Fairyland gray!
We need your help
to make it a colorful day!
i lined the envelopes with a colorful floral print paper, and closed them with a golden seal (hot glue, actually, not wax. a bit of PAM on the embosser and wax paper over a cold ice pack sets it up quickly and removes easily) embossed with an M and addressed with labels with a colored dot border that i made up in Word (and return address labels), printed onto sticker sheets and cut. names were also rainbow colored.
*****---------*****
about a week before the party, the weather was warm enough for t-shirts, bright and sunny, and i thought to myself how nice it was to be able to finally have a lovely warm day for mimi's birthday since march 1st, her real birth date, is typically cold, windy, and in our area, usually follows some snow storm. but ironically, the party day arrives and there's a freak snow shower...looks like Jack Frost really IS trying his best to ruin mimi's birthday celebration! luckily by the time the party started in the late afternoon, the sun was shining and the roads were dry and clear.
DECORATIONS:
i am dedicated to decorating properly to set the stage...i'm sure DH thinks it's an illness that i should seek professional treatment for, and he may not be too far off the mark...i literally feel sick inside if things dont look right. a weird dooming sensation. so i'm driven to do it just so, but at the same time if it doesnt all get done by the time the party comes around, i AM able to shrug it off and say, oh well, i know in my heart that i honestly did the best i could, and can move on (or maybe by then i'm just to freaking tired to care!). but up until that moment, i do feel a little sick thinking i wont make it all happen in time!
okay. that's really OCD.
so, anyway, friends, it's a rainbow decor with characters from the book. right off the bat, the obvious answer is: we need to put rainbows everywhere (and there's tons of prefab rainbow decorations out there that would have saved me a lot of time). i know how that looks...it's fine, but it's expected. but more importantly, the colors were NOT right...too primary. mimi really wanted to go with bright, jewel like tones and i had to agree that it was better to do so, especially for a girlish fairy party! so i wanted to find ways to bring the rainbow theme in, but in an unexpected way rather than with the prototypical rainbows dominating.
i found some tissue paper pompoms that were perfect, but they only came in three of the colors that we needed. so i bought more tissue paper, cut them to size and created the rest of the colors. these were hung up with Command hooks (the smallest size) from Target in a arc. strong enough to hold up, but comes off cleanly....LOVE that.
over the table, i hung a rod and draped it w/the same ribbons i put on the girls' tutus. fast, easy, cheap, but still cute.
found some colored medallion decorations in just the right colors to hang over the windows, so that was a great time saver!
for the birthday banner: using some scrapbook paper, i cut out circles. put those on larger handcut scalloped circles in solid colored cardstock. then printed out the letters onto glossy brochure paper in 350 font size, Harrington. cut out and mount onto the scrapbook paper. string together with ribbon. hung it up over a back drop of pink wrapping paper (99 cents a roll at Party City...it took three rolls to cover the wall over the buffet cabinet).
mimi helped me hang up the colored streamers in rainbow color order (with the addition of pink, which we used as sort of the overarching color throughout and for mimi's fairy color, even tho pink wasnt one of the 7 rainbow fairies). we also had some hanging straight down, so it looked like it arcs over and then down to the floor, but instead of letting it brush the floor, i set a black pot (from Halloween!) on the floor and pooled the streamers into the pot. then i hid a bag of crystals and clear colored pony beads inside the pot for the girls to find later (the bag was a large circle of indigo colored felt, filled with the 'jewels' and then gather the ends together and tied closed with gold rope. i added some more pony beads to the ends of the rope to bling it up a bit!).
we hung up pictures of the fairyland castle and jack frost's castle, as well as all the characters from the book and put them around the dining room (all from the internet and printed out large scale..there's a lot of 'artifacts' when enlarged, but i went over the outlines with markers to hide the worst of it). mimi painted several pictures of mushroom houses and mushroom condos (some with spiral staircases, decks for sunning, mailboxes, windows, etc. very cute.) which we put around the house. she also made some signage to put around! (love her!)
i forgot to take a pic of the front door, which turned out adorable. a rainbow over the door and blue streamers streamed from it and swagged the doorframe and were clipped to the two evergreen topiaries with bright yellow butterflies. there were already two small bright yellow hydrangea topiaries in white urns, flanking the door, and a yellow hydrangea wreath hanging on the door, that i had out for spring decorating, so altogether it was really cute.
the snack/dessert table was covered with a colorful table cloth, topped with a pink plastic table cover, a sturdy box draped with green table cover for the cake stand. swagged the front of the pink sheet, then draped assorted ribbons, which i left on the spools and stacked the spools and place items on top of the spools! no waste! i can just roll the ribbons back up after the party and they can be used again! (i love it when i can reuse things!)
the dining table was covered with green paper cover, some moss strips in the center, prefab flower balloon weights, and cut outs of the Rainbow Magic rainbow. i set the table with different colored plates (they dont sell assorted colors in a single pack so i had to buy one of each...grrr. on the bright side, i shouldnt have to buy paper plates for parties for a loooong time!). i let it go with the forks/napkins...i wasnt going to buy one of every color, too! so i went w/pink forks and yellow napkins. i printed out each fairy (and another set of fairies, printed 'flipped horizontal' for the backs) and cut them out and attached them to green cardstock 'stands' as the place cards. (some of the girls liked them enough to take them home with them).
and of course lots of colored balloons with extra long strings.
on the favor table, i just covered it with green paper table cover.
mimi made a little sign to post on a sidetable by the stairs "presents for mimi." that table had some easter decorations on it...er, good enough. truth be told, i wasnt even thinking about the presents, but clearly, Mimi was!
FOOD:
like i did for ozzy's bday last year, i decided to go w/another dessert/snack table instead of putting all my energies into just the cake. i think you get a lot more oomph w/a well decorated table, than an elaborate cake, for the same amount of effort. so i just went w/a simpler designed cake (which still took me until 4:30 am to make and decorate) and did up the table. DH looked at the spread and goes, "HOW many people are coming?" :) a skimpy table is just not attractive!
on the table: fairyland cake (layers of strawberry cake and white cake with rainbow sprinkles, filled with white chocolate cream cheese), 'cupcake' rice krispy treats with vanilla icing, a rainbow fruit/veggie platter (red apples, orange carrots, yellow mangoes, green celery, grapes) accompanied by colorful teacups of ranch dip and caramel dip, rainbow goldfish, brownie pops with rainbow sprinkles, colorful assorted candies in jars, Hershey's kisses topiaries, izze bottled drinks, chips, spinach dip, rainbow straws, napkins, forks, plates, a pair of rainbow pinwheels (that mimi found at joann's fabric store and declared they were perfect for the party)...everything brightly labeled and/or be-ribboned.
for dinner we ordered cheese pizzas.
GOODIES
for each girl i made a different colored tutu out of ribbons and tulle. i bought 2 yds of tulle per tutu, but in retrospect, i think i needed at the very least, 3 yards. they were a little skimpy.
wings in each color...i found them for a decent price online, but not in every color i needed from the same vendor (orange and indigo were missing). so i ordered an extra pink and purple one and used some water based spray on food color to convert the pink to orange and the purple to indigo.
bracelets in rainbow colors from Michael's, one for each girl
clip on colored hair and 'fairy dust' (body glitter) from Claire's (i searched hi and lo to find those itty bitty glass bottles with cork stoppers so i could put a little 'fairy dust' in each, but failed to find them anywhere...they would have been totally cute as fairy dust jars! had to settle for just dusting the girls at the party)
rainbow necklaces with color changing mood pendants (the girls loved those!) from Five Below.
a collection of books 1-4 of the Rainbow Magic rainbow fairies book from Amazon. inside each book, i glued a note i printed out with a starry background (created on Word) with the words:
To my friend so dear and true
A Rainbow Magic wish for you,
Happy times, joy and care,
Shall follow you everywhere.
Fairy giggles, fun and laughter,
And a happy ever after.
May your days be filled with glee,
For you have given these to me.
Thanks for making my birthday magical!
Your Friend,
Mimi
at the end of the party, the girls picked treats from the dessert table to take home and a balloon.
ACTIVITIES
planning the the activities probably took as much time as making all the decorations! DH saw me on the computer surfing the web A LOT, instead of cleaning the dishes in the sink. that stuff drives him crazy...but i had a deadline, so had to ignore the dirty looks and plow on thru. (we did employ some help with housekeeping, twice a week, which helped a lot, and quite possibly saved my marriage.) it was a lot of researching and planning and thinking about! some science about light/rainbows? appropriate crafts? activities to get them moving? how to tie it in with the books? what? there's a movie? etc.
in the end here's what i had planned and how it all panned out:
i printed out a list of the fairies with a picture and a description of each and put it on the wall. as each girl arrived, they looked over the chart and chose the fairy they wanted to be and donned the corresponding color tutu and wings. as each new girl arrived, all the girls ushered her to the chart and helped her put on her special tutu and wings! srsly?!? SO CUTE!!! each girl arrived one at a time, so it worked out quite seamlessly! and what amazed me was that many of the girls had thought about what color they wanted to be ahead of time and came dressed in that color! i loved that the indigo fairy came in denim! :) (as the party went on, the girls even called each other by their Fairy names instead of their real names, so Lily who chose to be the violet fairy was called "Heather." too funny.
after all the girls had squealed their way into tutus, wings, and all around the house (yes, all three levels and every room! mimi said they needed tours. LOL) i gathered them together to finished their transformation from girl to fairy.
DRESS UP: (pretend/dress up) i set out a silver tray with clip in colored hair, bracelets, color changing mood pendant necklaces, and fairy dust. the girls put on their accessories and i used a silver colored toy wand with some maribou fluff on one end to sprinkle 'Fairy Dust' (body glitter) on their arms. when they were sufficiently made up, i took out the supplies to make wands because every fairy needs her own enchanted wand!
WANDS: (craft) i set out Glo-sticks, assortment of ribbons, stickers, bendaroos, tape, scissors and they set about making their wands to ward off Jack Frost. after their wands were done, i got in a quick picture of the group. then i warned them that Jack Frost was sending his Goblins to turn Fairyland gray to ruin Mimi's birthday and they must stop the Goblins!
STOP THE GOBLINS: (movement) mimi used a balloon pump to pump up several colorful balloons before the party. i printed out three images of JF's goblins and rolled them up and put them into three gray balloons, blew them up and tied them. the other gray balloons i put a roll of blue cloud shaped paper. the girls were tasked to popping all the gray balloons and finding the three goblins to stop them from carrying out JF's dastardly plan. they quite joyfully popped the balloons until all three goblins were 'stopped.' then to add more protection to Fairyland, Mimi read out loud a Fairy spell at the end:
No icy finger,
No frozen stare,
No naughty goblins
anywhere.
All the fairies sing
their song.
Chilly Jack Frost
now be gone!
i should have had the girls stand in a circle and wave their wands...that would have been cuter, but i wasnt thinking fast enough.
after they stopped the goblins from turning Fairyland cold and gray, i alerted them to more trouble from JF! while they were busy fighting off the Goblins, JF had gone to the Fairyland castle and had stolen away all the jewels. without the jewels Fairyland would lose all of its color!
FIND THE MISSING JEWELS!: (movement/hunt) the fairies had to find the missing jewels, and quick!, to restore color to the land and to the party!
i gave them one clue which Mimi read outloud:
To Find The Jewels, You Must Go
To the End of the Rainbow!
In the Dark, You'll Find the Light
So What's Wrong can be Made Right!
so the girls went off, en masse, to find the rainbow and follow it to its end. finally they settled on the rainbow streamers in the dining room, followed it to the black pot at the end of the streamers and found the jewel bag! hooray!
once they found the jewels, i congratulated the fairies on a job well done and told them they had a special job to do. the only way to bring the color back to Fairyland was to make rainbows. (some girls gasped out loud and others had this wide eyed, round O mouthed face...so cute!!! hahaha!
SUNCATCHERS: (craft/science) i asked the kids how to make rainbows and they said raindrops and the sun. i told them how light looks white but when it gets bent by the raindrops you see all the colors that actually make up white light. aaaaaannnd another way to make the rainbows? ...with crystals! so i opened the bag of 'fairyland jewels' they found and spread out the crystals and beads and showed them how to make their own suncatchers to create rainbows. the girls each chose a crystal and strung on some colorful pony beads to make it pretty. we added a bright colored bulldog clip to the end so the beads stayed on and to give it something to hang with. then they put them into their goody bags when they were done.
DINNER & A SHOW
PIZZA/CAKE TIME: and just like that, an hour had passed and it was time for pizza and cake to celebrate all their hard work to restore Fairyland and save Mimi's birthday from Jack Frost!
i had envisioned showing the movie downstairs in our movie room, lights out, with popcorn. since that didnt work, we tried to stream it onto our Apple TV (which we were still trying to figure out how to make work...it's Apple! it's not s'posed to be this hard to figure out!). and that was incredibly frustrating...kind of got it going, but then it stopped midstream. in the end, DH finally got the thing running on an old dinky portable polaroid dvd player hooked up to the tv in the family room. it would have to do. so the girls watched the movie (the whole beginning of the movie, as each fairy showed up, the girls would shout, "there's me! that's me! there i am!" omg. so funny.)
all too soon, mommies and daddies came to pick up their fairies and the girls shopped the treat table for goodies before heading out.
OTHER IDEAS THAT I LOVED BUT DIDNT USE:
if we had extra time to kill, i also bought the Twister game since it's got all those colors. i thought it could be fun for the girls. we never got around to playing that game, tho.
other wonderful ideas that i saw were rainbow cakes (each layer a different color), rainbow ice cubes for drinks, rainbow jello...all really cute, but SO much food coloring! i decided it was done enough.
i also liked several rainbow science related activities but when i tried them out at home, they werent that interesting or they didnt quite work out as well as i would have liked. rainbow milk (too slow), mixing colors (eh), making spinners: the idea being if all the colors on the spinner are true, when it spins, it looks white...tried several attempts and none of them looked especially white; sharpie rainbows: color a t-shirt with a sharpie marker and drop rubbing alcohol on it and the colors separate and make a rainbow circle that looks like the underside of a cd (too stinky and didnt seem to relate well to our mission). there was one activity using a glass of water and a mirror to make a rainbow looked promising, but i wasnt sure if we'd have adequate sunlight in the early evening to do it.
CLOSING
Mimi loved the party and gave me lots of hugs and thanks and told me the best part of the party was me. :) (love her!) I am SO glad she had such a wonderful time. makes all that effort worth it! (special thanks to DH for helping out with various tasks, fixing up stuff, picking up meals, and taking little Ozzy out of the house!)
**Looking to make a color fill slider card? here's some links!: (thanks shirley for your help finding these online!)
(w/step by step photos)
(w/diagrams and a free template)
(w/step by step photos)
(video tutorial)
(another video tutorial)
WOW! you are amazing! you could totally be a kids' birthday party planner! Wanna do Kayla's party? she wants Dolores Tyrannosaurus on her birthday cake. we're having it at lake accotink so i don't have to decorate or clean the house, ha!
ReplyDeleteYou are indeed amazing... and I hope Lexi has 1/10th the ambiance for her 7th birthday. I'm always impressed with the brightness, attention to detail, and incorporation of your kid's true affection de jour.
ReplyDeleteYou're a great Mom Sang, and that's the real feat.
Well, what I'd like to know is 1) what is an Apple TV and 2) what the heck was Rob doing while Don Ho was being so helpful, huh?
ReplyDeleteAmazing party! Thank you so much for all of the inspiring ideas! My daughter is having a sleep over and this is our theme too! :)
ReplyDeleteSang,
ReplyDeleteI came across your blog and love it!!!!!!!! I'm planning a Rainbow Magic party for my 8-year old and can't help but wonder how you put together the Rainbow Magic invitation itself!!!!
Did you use PhotoShop? I pulled a few images off the web too but couldn't put it together quite like yours!!!! I'm not even trying to do the magic pull-out thing, but just trying to put together the front of the invitation. How did you do it?
Any chance you still have the file??? LOL
I will now follow your blog, your cakes are absolutely breath-taking!!!
Hi, I came across your page and since I'm planning a Rainbow Magic party for my 7-yr-old, I couldn't help but be blown away by your decorations and genius ideas!!!!
ReplyDeleteI'm having trouble putting together the invitation (not even trying to do anything fancy, just trying to put the front together). Pulled some images off the web but couldn't quite put them together. Did you use Photoshop?
any chance you'd still have that file kicking around? lol
Also, your cakes are breath-taking! Too bad I live in Canada, but I'll be looking at your creations for inspiration!!
Thanks again.
hi winnie,
Deletei used my old windows Word (which i no longer have on my imac...i do miss it!) to make the cards. i'll see if i can find anything useful to you. i'm in the middle of a new cake, so it may be hit or miss when i find it! :( sorry...someone needs to show me how to better organize all my files!!!! anyway, i bet it would have been a lot easier to create in photoshop. i have to get that one of these days!
Same here! Trying (and failing) to figure out how to put all the images together for an invite. Would love the file if you ever found it :)
DeleteThanks for the inspiring ideas! My husband was so impressed with the "magic" invitation. He also banned me from trying it :)
This is SO awesome! Would you mind awfully if I borrow some of your ideas for my daughter's party? I love some of the poems you made for the invitations, books, etc! I bet Mimi had the best birthday ever!
ReplyDelete