Somewhere over the rainbow ...

I have always looked forward to Cantaloupe's birthday party. This year was no exception. The party preparations started about 3 weeks back ... when I say preparations, it means, narrowing the guest list. This time, it was not as hard as it normally is. Narrowing the list was easy, but narrowing the evite invitation proved much harder. If the foreground color suited me, the background was not going with it ... when these two matched the main image would be a sore thumb. After about 3 days of exhaustive searches, finally decided on a template.
My sister helped me with this ... thank you very much ! The evite was sent out and within the first 2 days, there was no more "Declined responses" and hardly any "accepted responses". I began to doubt if we had to reconsider the party date. I called a couple of friends, to be told that they had been considering other plans for that particular saturday, but were yet to make a decision. I was nervous if the guests would make it or not ... after all the party was for Cantaloupe and if her friends did not come, that would be no good for her. Besides, the idea of having the party in the park was for the kids to have fun. My parents volunteered to cook for the guests ... I tried to persuade them to not stress themselves too hard ... but they were firm. The idea of owning a major responsibility of their only grand daughter's birthday party, seem to brighten their spirits. After much debate the menu was decided .... Samosas, Sprouted beans salad, Kadamba (rice item), Raita, curd rice, Mysore Pak (sweet), Chips, Fruits (watermelon and pine apple), cucumber salad and of course some cool juice to beat the sun.

I was sure the party would have a theme ... the decision was made that it was going to be a "RainBow" party. Now, we had to come up with games, decorations, cutlery etc to reflect the theme.
Some of things we did were in accordance to the theme:
1. Painted huge rainbows on banners and worded them appropriately. Actually we modified the "Wizard of Oz" song to suit our theme. But it was perfect for our setting. We tied these to all the trees around the park picnic area.

2. My dad made cute miniature rainbows with card board and we used it as table decoration.

3. Our cutlery was color co-ordinated. The plates were green, cake cups were red, paper napkins were deep yellow, spoons were violet, the table cloth was pale yellow. We arranged it in the form of a semi circular, and it certainly went with our theme.

4. Balloons in all colors of the rainbow were tied to the picnic area.

5. We made "Thank You" cards of foam in all colors. Decorated them with little star sparklers. These cards were given to the kids during the party along with foam stickers, so they could decorate their own cards. The excitement in making their own little projects was so evident ... a lot of parents were thrilled to see their excited kids and appreciated this idea of ours.

6. For the return gifts, instead of the regular bags, I opted for colored boxes. The colored boxed when arranged on the table looked so cute to say the least.

7. I bought 7 little plastic boxes in all colors of the rainbow, filled it up with candies and hid them. The parents and kids had fun galore looking for these "Treasures". I was myself surprised with the clues I had come up with for the treasure hunt.

8. Since the party was going to be in the park, we purchased Visors, instead of the regular birthday caps. Again, the visors were carefully chosen to reflect the colors of the rainbow.

9. Of course, it was a "Rainbow" cake... rather a strawberry cake with Rainbow icing.

10. The best idea (according to me) was the welcome necklace the kids good. We had made fruit loop necklaces with a Candy serving as "Pendant". The colored fruit loops sure went with our theme, and kids snacked on it as they played along in the swings / slides etc


At the end of the party, I felt so satisfied and Cantaloupe was thrilled to bits.