A Party for Chick

Chick's birthday party was this weekend, and look how awesome I am: posting already!!  (of course, my house is in shambles, etc etc etc.  Sometimes you have to have priorities.)

This picture makes me happy inside.  LOVE LOVE LOVE those girls!

Anyhow, Chick wanted a "Rainbow and Butterfly" party, and after doing a little snooping through pinterest, I was more than happy to oblige!

Rainbow colored goody bags with rainbow ribbon wands and "butterfly" snack baggies (Chick helped me put on the pipe cleaners, and I love the added personality of them!).  That was it, but then they got more candy and little toys from the games, so they got to add to their bags later.

 The food table: netting rainbow backdrop, with some plastic butterflies hanging in it.
Skewered fruit rainbow, rainbow jello (I don't suggest doing the jello unless you like eating jello for the next week...we don't normally eat jello.), and of course the cake.

 As the kids started to arrive I worked on the butterfly face painting, while my awesome friend Kendra directed some parachute playtime, duck duck goose, London bridge, and Simon Says (and helped with some face painting).

  

Wings for Chick provided by our friend, Jon.

Once they all had their butterflies on, we played Roll-a-Rainbow (download from here).  The kids got to fill in their rainbows with M&M's and then got to keep the candy to take home.  My girls had spent quite a bit of time sorting the M&M's by color the day before the party...yay for helpers!

Next we popped the balloon rainbow.  The rainbow didn't turn out looking as I'd intended, but it didn't matter--popping balloons is popping balloons.  Each one had a toy or candy inside.

After all of the balloons were popped, we made Fruit Loop necklaces/bracelets.

Then they were thirsty, so they drank milk.  From sprinkle-rimmed glasses.  Someone came up with the idea of blowing bubbles, which would rise up to the sprinkles, and then pop back down into the milk again...which colored the milk and provided ample entertainment for several minutes : )

before

after!

And then the snacks and cake and rainbow sherbet.  I made a rainbow cake (like one that is floating around on Pinterest (where I got pretty much all of my ideas for this party), and I was quite pleased with how it turned out.  It did take some time to get it baked, but decorating it was quick and easy.  I bought edible butterflies on etsy--that was my one big "frivolous" expense for the party, but Chick has loved eating them and looking at them, and so in the end it was ok to get them.

Last was present opening.  Chick got great presents, and was very excited about all of them.  I will admit that I confiscated the Barbie...I'm just not ready for her to go down that road.  I had barbies at her age, I think, so I shouldn't be such a hypocrite.  She wasn't very excited that I took it away, but I don't know that it will be for too long anyhow.....

And then they all went home.  Except for my three, of course.  I cleaned up, ate lunch, and took a nap.  The girls played with all of the new toys for the rest of the afternoon.

A special thanks to Kendra and Maggie.  I COULD NOT have gotten through it without them.  I had been naive to think "it's just a couple more than for preschool, so I can handle it" but it was a lot.  Kendra also took most of the pictures.  Thanks, gals!!