Happy 4th Birthday, Emily!!!
This post is extremely full of photos, but I know there are some people who couldn't come (because they're in the midwest) who want to see photos of Emily's party, so here you go!
Party prep! (I love this part!)
Rainbow twizzlers for the favor bags, sorted by color
Pasta in the middle of the dye-ing process--so easy!
(Just add rubbing alcohol, food coloring & time! Em had fun helping me with this.)
Wednesday afternoon I went to a specialty cake store.
I was totally out of place because I know NOTHING about baking--
like, why do they sell 10 different sizes of dowel rods?!
However, they sold me the most incredible gel food coloring and yummy fondant frosting. Yay!
Just one tiny pinch of food coloring (just a flick on a toothpick shown above) turned the entire bowl of cake batter bright blue! (I'm easily impressed.)
The food coloring that will apparently last forever...
Saturday morning I took my 6 layers of cake out of the freezer and assembled the cake.
I generally don't like to bake, but this was fun!
Emily helped me decorate the living room.
We put the rainbow twizzlers and chocolate gold coins into the favor bags
Our rainbow
I was being cheap and didn't want to buy table cloths, so I repurposed our Twister game as a cover for the art table. (It's still in process of getting set up here.)
Michael & Jill came a bit early to help set up. :)
(I had this tutorial for a great balloon banner... but it took so much time blowing up the balloons that we ran out of time to put it together... so instead we let the kids play with the balloons in the bounce house. They didn't seem to mind :)
Time to cool off with rainbow slushies!
(aka: otter pops mushed up and layered in a trifle bowl by color!)
I had a love/hate relationship with the rainbow slushy.
Love: it was super simple (in theory) and a huge hit with the kids
Hate: it was way more time consuming and messy to make than I expected.
Time for crafts!
Have you seen the Modern Family episode where the mom wants to have a craft party at the son's birthday party and the husband tells her all along it's a waste of time and that she's a dork because no one will want to do crafts? Well, I was afraid that was going to happen to me (and Pete thought so too, but he already knows that I'm a dork, so that's ok).... but instead the kids loved our art table and had a fun coloring, making pasta rainbows, necklaces and more. :) Success!
Emily wasn't happy that I asked her to stop coloring to take a picture.
She was happy to get back to her picture though. :)
Josie, Em & Ella playing in Em's house
Time for cake!
"Happy birthday to you... happy birthday to you..."
"happy birthday dear Emily..."
The rainbow cake was a huge hit with lots of 'ooohs' & 'ahhs' :)
Me? Get carried away? Never! ;)
The boys took their cake eating quite seriously.
Thumbs up for rainbow cake!
For those of you who know my daughter well and have heard her talk about her wedding...
...this is Joe-Joe. :) (He's a sweet heart and if Em has her way, my future son-in-law.)
If you ask her when she's getting married she'll likely tell you:
"My wedding's coming up, maybe tomorrow, but Daddy says not for 20 years."
What goes well with cake?
BOUNCING!
Goofy girls found Em's dress up clothes...
Jocelyn, Ashley, Emily & Emily (aka: the two emilies)
The after party: pizza & Hawkeye football
(I love my two boys on the couch... watching the game... each with their bottle...)
...and more bouncing...
this time the moms & dads joined in on the fun
After the party rental place came back for the bounce house it was finally time to open presents.
Thanks everyone for coming to our party!!!
"Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue...
And the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true."
