Making a Rainbow

For Josie's birthday (...way back in June...) we celebrated with a rainbow theme. It matched her sunny and bright personality. So after spending lots of time on Pinterest, I collected ideas and decided which to implement.

There was definitely a rainbow cake. I decided on a layered rainbow cake instead of a tie-dyed rainbow cake. Two things I wish I had done differently. I used 9" pans, I should have used 8" pans to make the layers just a little thicker. Then I should have used six similar bowls to split up the batter. I only used two at a time, and you can see how the bottom layers are thinner than the top.

It still tasted delicious and looked pretty awesome.

Instead of decorating the cake with icing, I made a pennant banner for Josie.  The sticks are skewers and the letters are just scrap paper glued to twine. It turned out so nice that it now resides on Josie's memory board.

 

I did not get pictures of the rest of the party but will share the details for fun.

I made rainbow Jello. While it wasn't difficulty, it was time consuming and a little bit ornery. Six layers of Jello will fill a 9"x13" casserole dish to capacity and it is surprisingly difficult to keep the liquid Jello from sloshing around, destroying the layer beneath or slopping over the edges. The two things I suggest for this are to wait a while between adding layers so it can firm up and pour the next layer over the back of a spoon so it doesn't create a hole where it pours in.

In the end, the rainbow Jello did look pretty cool in the clear casserole dish and everyone liked it despite six flavors getting mixed.

We put out a rainbow of fruits and vegetables. I didn't actually arrange anything in a rainbow, but the colors were there. The one comment about that is the snowman serving dish didn't really fit the theme but I appreciated someone setting out the food. 

We created a rainbow across the back yard with balloons hanging from twine. A combination of heat and balloons blown too big made most of them pop before the party even started. It looked really awesome when we first hung it up though.

And Xander helped me make favor bags for the kids. We just used brown lunch bags and drew on rainbows. I can't ever remember what all we put in them but I know it included Skittles (obviously).

And if you are interested, here is where I pinned my ideas.

Now to plan for Xander's birthday!