Making Astrid’s 5th birthday BRIGHT – a rainbow party!

We had been promising Astrid a big party for her 5th birthday (after a quiet affair last year, the 3 years before that she had quite the parties though!).  This is her first year at full-time school and she has a lovely group of friends, and still keeps in contact with lots of friends from outside school.  This meant it was never going to be a small affair, but my theory is the more the merrier!

Astrid had been talking about having a rainbow party for a few months, so rainbow party it was!  While Anto was in Kansas in May, we did a little party planning.  Tip for young-players, a 4-year-old can work out how to use Pinterest in about 2 minutes and she also believes her parents are magical fairies that can make anything she pinned to her ‘rainbow party board’.  Lucky for her the magical fairies were powered by coffee, wine, and psuedo-ephedrine (thanks to yet another cold brought home from school), and managed to pull off most of her wishes.  Nothing like late night icing of cakes, which seems to happen before every birthday party!

Astrid had decided she really wanted a rainbow layer cake, covered in sprinkles, with a rainbow and clouds on top. I did talk her down from the cake that had another entire tier of rainbow layers on top. Now that would just not have been sensible (and would have required me to drink even more coffee and wine). With a mostly clean house and all but the last-minute food and decorating done, we got the monstrosity of a cake filled, leveled and crumb coated before midnight. Yes there was a spirit level involved, but it was perfectly level……….  Anto made sure of that. Doesn’t everyone spend their Friday nights icing cakes and coating strawberries in chocolate and sprinkles?

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Finally the big day had arrived, and it was time to turn the house into a festival of rainbows.  It’s pretty easy to decorate with a rainbow theme!

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For her party activities, Astrid wanted to do rainbow craft beading, colouring and ‘pin the rainbow on the sun’.  Since craft and colouring are pretty much her favourite things, we thought the other party guests might enjoy them too.  Anto did have a late night making up the poster for the ‘pin the rainbow on the sun’, but it looked pretty good.  Astrid had sorted all the beads for the bracelet necklace making into rainbow colours on her own (a good way to keep your 4-year-old occupied, it would appear)!

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For the party favours, we decided on little bags of chocolate balls, in every colour of the rainbow……along with a rainbow sour strap and some lolly clouds.  There was also a rainbow lollipop to up the sugar and rainbow factor!

2016-07-01_0009 2016-07-01_0010 2016-07-01_0012Then it was time to get that cake finished.  Several buckets of butter-cream later and some rolling in sprinkles (that surprisingly involved not too much swearing) and the cake was done.  Our rainbow and clouds added and it was beautiful…….. if we do say so ourselves!

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Once the final ribbon was added, it was a rainbow spectacular! Here is the finished product……

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With the cake done it was time to get the party table set up.  We had a lot of brightly coloured food for our rainbow party table.  For the sweet-tooths there were:

  • rainbow crystal sticks
  • jars of rainbow chocolate beans
  • rainbow-layered mini jellies
  • rainbow oreo pops
  • rainbow fruit kebabs
  • fairy bread pinwheels
  • rainbow mini-trifles (strawberry, rockmelon, banana)
  • chocolate coated strawberries with rainbow sprinkles
  • rainbow sprinkle cookies
  • rainbow cupcakes
  • chocolate freckles
  • red lemonade

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To offset some of the sugar there was some savoury food:

  • spinach dip cob-loaf
  • rainbow vegie platter
  • spinach and cheese pull-apart
  • frankfurts with tomato sauce
  • beetroot soup with yoghurt
  • pumpkin and chive soup
  • glogg (mulled wine) – for the adults that wanted something stronger!

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With the addition of the highly-subtle (and miniscule) birthday cake, the table was a sea of colour, and deliciousness……..

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The kids certainly seemed to enjoy the food and drink (and I didn’t hear the adults complaining either!).  There was an immediate assault on the party table, and lots of eating, drinking and plenty of smiles…..

Of course my kids were well and truly in on the sugar-fest!

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When kids weren’t stuffing their faces with food, the craft and colour zone was very popular! The kids loved the beading in particular, and lots of beautiful creations were made. I spied several of the kids wearing their beads at school this week too…..

2016-07-02_0026 2016-07-02_0027 2016-07-02_0028 2016-07-02_0029Pin the rainbow on the sun was also a popular activity.  The kids did a great job getting their rainbow in the right spot, even if some of them were trying their hardest to see under the blindfold!

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With their fill of crafting and games, it was time to cut the cake. First there was the important task of blowing out the candles and singing ‘happy birthday’!  Astrid is pretty adept at extinguishing candles, but the number 5 sparkler provided a bit of an extra challenge.  Luckily there was an array of other colourful candles to blow out…….

2016-07-02_0034 2016-07-02_0035 2016-07-02_0036 2016-07-02_0037 2016-07-02_0038 2016-07-02_0039It was almost a shame to cut the masterpiece, but the kids were all excited to see what was inside. I also didn’t want to be left with that much cake!  A few kids had guessed that there might be a rainbow inside, but there was still gasps and applause when the cake was cut to reveal the rainbow goodness……..2016-07-02_0040 2016-07-02_0041 2016-07-02_0042 2016-07-02_0043Each of the six layers was a white chocolate buttermilk cake, and they were filled with Chantilly cream and covered in buttercream and sprinkles. It was extremely tasty, which was lucky because there was an awful lot left!  The teachers at Astrid’s school got cake for lunch on Monday……

After 2 hours of fun and festivities it was time for everyone to depart. By all accounts it the guests all had a great time.  I had lots of kids tell me ‘it was the best party ever!’….. that might have been the sugar talking but nonetheless there were plenty of happy munchkins bouncing home.

It was then time to restore the house to some kind of order.  The party aftermath is always a bit special but aside from a mountain of cake and glitter, it wasn’t too bad.

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Being mid-Winter it was pretty much dark by the time the party had ended, so we had a little twilight present opening.  The birthday girl was well and truly spoilt.  So many lovely new books, craft items and toys.  We will be having a very craft-filled holidays!

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Two very happy and tired went to bed after a huge day, the somehow managed to sleep despite the sugar and excitement!  Anto and I had a bit of a late night cleaning up, not quite as late as the previous night’s cake icing effort, though.  All would have been fine except Anto had a 3.30am wakeup to head to the airport for his next overseas trip.  He probably should have eaten some of the cake to get him going!

The 5th birthday celebrations are now done and dusted!  A big thank you to all those who helped us celebrate, we hope you had as much fun as we did.  Also a huge thanks to those who helped with the party prep and food, especially Granny, Grandma, Grandpa and my friend Jade (who always makes the delicious cake pops).  It’s always a team effort.  Anto will no doubt be banning Astrid from Pinterest before the next party!

34 thoughts on “Making Astrid’s 5th birthday BRIGHT – a rainbow party!

    1. Thanks! After we stuck all the layers together and did a crumb coat of icing, it was set in the fridge then put the top layer of buttercream on and rolled the whole tower in a tray of sprinkles (about a kg of them). Then iced the top and put the sprinkles on that. There were surprisingly few on the floor! That cake was heavy though 🙂

    2. Didn’t squish the icing at all Michelle. Also only took about 3 minutes once it was iced. A good workout on the arms though, and a 2 person job 🙂

    3. Carla I meant to take pics but was a bit distracted not dropping the thing on the floor! We had a cake board on each end (smaller than the cake) so it made it easier to hold and Anto rolled as I shook the sprinkles into a big pile for him to roll it through. It was surprisingly easy and mess free comapred to what I was fearing. Bit more mess getting them on the top!

  1. I just watched a Poh episode today where she cut circles in her layers of a rainbow cake and filled it with lollies to make a piñata cake. Lucky Astrid didn’t see that.

  2. Get the heck out of here!!!! My God, this is spectacular. I am literally drooling over the cake…the pictures were enough but then I read your description and I lost it 😀 Nic, this is such an incredible party that you and Anto pulled together. I’m in awe. You guys are at a whole different level to me. I am still stuck on how you got the sprinkles all over the cake so perfectly evenly. I am having a coniption just thinking about how I would NOT manage that, bahahahahaha!!! Loved the photos and the story and I am so glad your little lady loved her rainbow party (typo and all 😉 ) xx

    1. It took a whole day to bake all those layers, and a lot of chocolate and sugar :). The magical fairies have been busy. Much coffee was needed 😉 Anto is good humoured when I inform of what he is going to do. ‘you will be putting these layers together and icing them and rolling them in sprinkles and it will be even and level.’ ……. and then he does it because he knows what is good for him 😉 He was worried it didn’t look professional enough, I told it was fine!

      I missed the typo, where was that? I’m always making them, I swear I can actually spell, just can’t type!

    2. Um, tell Anto that cake rocks my world and was pretty professional looking in my eyes. A spirit level was used for God’s sake!!!!

      It wasn’t your typo, it was Anto’s…I believe he made the gorgeus ‘pin the rainbow on the sun’ poster? 😉

    3. OMG, I didn’t even notice that until now, well-spotted! That’ what you get for last-minute prep 🙂 I hope noone else noticced 🙂

      I told Anto he was doing an awesome job, don’t think he’ll give up his day job though 🙂

  3. Lovely photos Nicole. The party looked great. Lots of effort in cooking, planning and organising activities. I hope you got a chance to enjoy it on the day also.

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