Rainbow Unicorn Birthday Party - on a budget!

I am not a Pinterest Mom. I look at Pinterest and get ideas, but they rarely turn out like the pictures - basically, I am a Pinterest Fail Mom. 

I am also a Mom who looks at some of these party blogs and thinks, "Are you kidding me? She's SIX!!!" Sorry, but we will not be hiring a pony that will be painted in rainbow hues and have a horn stuck to its head for the day. I am not creating a picture-perfect table, because I know the kids will likely be eating as they race through the house. I am not spending a fortune on custom cakes and special outfits. I do, however, like to have fun with a theme, and "rainbows" makes everything so easy! Here are some things we did for Sheridan's birthday, and none of them cost a fortune.

Unicorn Horns

Mardi Gras horns from the dollar store - $3 for 18. I painted the plastic blower part in glue and dusted it with glitter. Then I cut slits in the sides on the other end, and slid ribbon through. I had some ribbon already, and picked up other scraps at local thrift shops. These were to give away at the end of the party, and I wanted to let them pick their own colors, so I put them in this basket with a sparkly thrift shop scarf rather than in the...

Goodie Bags

Which were just white paper bags the kids decorated the week before.

Gotta love those dot markers! They were filled with a few brightly colored toys, like the old stand-by beads,

and packets of rainbow goldfish crackers, rainbow chip cookies, rainbow colored fruit snacks, and some brightly colored candies. All inexpensive, mostly useful, and things I can toss into lunch boxes if there are leftovers!

On to the 

Cake

There are a million ways to do a rainbow themed cake. Since we ended up in a weird time crunch, I decided to do rainbow layers, which I could make and freeze the week ahead, then assemble the night before. We have a local 'dented can' type store that sells overstocks, etc., and I usually pick up a few cake mixes when I'm there anyway.

I only used one packet for each color (except the green, which crumbled because I didn't wait for it to cool, so I had to make another one), so about 50 - 80 cents per color. No yellow, which I could have made with food coloring, but I had yellow frosting, so I decided to put it together with that. We already had 6 layers, because there is also pink in the rainbow - just ask Sheridan!

That's a lot of food coloring. There is nothing homemade or healthy about this cake, and I make no apologies for that.

I put it together Friday night, while the kids had a highly nutritious supper of pizza.

This is not a Pinterest worthy cake. 

I started smoothing the frosting, but that just exposed edges of the larger layers (and how I got different circumferences when they were ALL BAKED IN THE SAME PAN is beyond me), so I gave up. Here's the thing, Moms: whose birthday is it? The kid's. Who needs to be impressed? The birthday girl. Those fancy cakes with the perfect fondant Disney characters? They look adorable, but, news flash: fondant tastes like play-do. There, I said it! You do not need to have a perfect cake, just one that makes the birthday kid smile.

Daddy always decorates the birthday cakes, and I made this one fairly easy on him. Bag of M&Ms, sorted by color:

Arranged in a rainbow under the unicorn topper I picked up at a thrift shop:

And, voila!

Pretty enough to please a 6-year-old girl, and it cost around $12. It's just too bad we didn't have any use for the brown M&Ms.

Oh.

The cake was tall, but I worried about being able to cut it into enough pieces for everyone, so I also made cupcakes at the last minute - Funfetti cake mix, chocolate frosting, and rainbow sprinkles. I tend to way overdo the food. Call it residual effects of living in Ukraine, where you MUST have enough food to feed the entire city at any given event. There turned out to be plenty of both (which means plenty of leftovers!)

I think she liked it.

The inside looked cool, too!

After Logan ate all the frosting and M&Ms, and pronounced himself full.

Of course, first we ate actual

Food

I like to serve finger foods - things you can try a little of, or binge on, things that come in small amounts. A mix of healthy and not-so-much.

I had been craving these meatballs all month:

Just generic frozen meatballs, doctored up a LOT. I much prefer home made meatballs, but those take forever! Since a couple people asked: I added brown sugar, minced garlic, spy sauce, worcestershire sauce, liquid smoke, and a quart of crushed tomatoes.

Rainbow Muddy Buddies:

At least, they were supposed to be rainbow. I decided to use this rainbow colored cereal instead of sprinkles, since there were sprinkles in just about everything else. I should have stuck with sprinkles. And then I discovered I didn't have white chocolate chips like I thought, and had to use regular, so...basically they are just regular Muddy Buddies with a lot of excess crumbs. But, Sheridan loved them!

Rainbow fruit and veggie tray with unicorn poop dip:

Rainbow Jell-O (easy, but you have to start it a couple days before, so there is time for each layer to set).

Rainbow(ish) Pasta Salad:

to which I totally forgot to add cheese,

and Rainbow Sherbet Punch, which I never got a picture of. I way overbought the sherbet, so I know what I'm having after the kids go to bed tonight:) *

I had a rainbow of plates and cups, many of them left over from previous parties, and then white plastic ware and napkins tied up in colored ribbons: 

I don't plan a lot of activities any more, because the kids mostly just like to run around and scream really loud. Seems silly to interrupt the fun to make them play a game. I was always the shy kid who needed something to do, though, so I had a coloring/puzzle table,

And a unicorn horn ring toss made with a pinata stick from the thrift store, and embroidery hoops wrapped in silver duct tape. The 'horn' is in a juice can, also wrapped in silver tape, held up by rocks and rainbow colored aquarium gravel.

Everyone seemed to have a good time! Mountain families can be pretty spread out, so it's nice for the grown-ups to get together and just talk. The school is so small, you can invite all the kids in the class (Kinder, 1st and 2nd grade) AND their siblings, and not get overwhelmed. I really like getting to know them all now, so when they hit their teenage years I am not worrying about who my kids are hanging out with.

Sheridan got some wonderful gifts - there wasn't a single thing that made me wince, and she truly loved everything. She had fun, her friends had fun, their parents had fun, and that makes Mommy happy. 

Happy sixth birthday to my Paper Bag Princess!

*It just occurred to me, I distinctly remember buying Bugles because they look like unicorn horns, but they did not make it to the table. We had an abundance of junk food, so that's not a problem, but...where the heck did I put them?!