Little m's First Birthday Party!

I knew I wanted to make a rainbow cake ever since noticing one on the internet a few years ago. I just needed the right occasion. A first birthday party? Perfect! Thus, for Little m's birthday, a rainbow themed party was born! First on Pinterest, then in reality.

I knew I wanted to keep the party fairly small and invited only my immediate family members and best friend. I also knew I wanted it to be a pool party because, well, my parents have a pool and it was a hot day in August!

For decorations, I hit the dollar store and stocked up on balloons. I loved the balloon garland
I saw John and Sherry from Young House Love make, so I decided to give it a try. My dad is Mr. Handy and came up with a much easier way to knot the balloons on without feeding the super long string though each and every time. I think the garland turned out fabulously and I hung it between the pool and the house. So simple yet so pretty, blowing in the breeze.

Other than the garland, I hung a few balloons from the mailbox and decorated the table area a bit with what else, more balloons! In proper rainbow order, might I add.

I also filled a beer glass up with skittles and popped some pinwheels in for a centrepiece. 

I tried to make the food as rainbowy as possible as well. I made a rainbow fruit tray, rainbow veggie tray, rainbow fruit dip, rainbow jello (my mom's recipe), and for non-rainbow food - pulled pork, coleslaw, chips, and pickles! I sent the kids home with rainbow popcorn for their party favour.

For dessert I made rainbow cupcakes, a mini rainbow cake for the birthday girl, and a huge rainbow cake for everyone else. I wanted to use gel food colouring, as I read that it makes the colours more vivid, but I couldn't find any. I didn't really look too hard.

 

I got the idea of the mini cake from this blog and I love how it turned out. I went skimpy with the cream cheese frosting on Little m's cake because she'd never really eaten sugar before and I didn't want to have a wild animal on my hands. 

Little m was delighted with all of the attention and although she liked the cake, I think she liked the Happy Birthday singing more than anything else! We ended up taking away the bottom four layers of the cake to make it easier for Little m to eat smush it into her dress. 

The big cake was made from two boxes of mix, a whole lotta food colouring, and a double batch of my mom's cream cheese frosting. She was a labour of love, she was. Things would have been much quicker if I had more that two cake pans, but such is life. The end result was so worth it. It took four adults to cut the cake and hold it up so it wouldn't fall over, but hey, that was fun in and of itself. 

The day was absolutely perfect, Little m was her usual happy self, and I had so much fun planning and executing the rainbow party. Even though she's a year old, Little m is still my peanut and we are so thankful we had the opportunity to celebrate her first year with friends and family. Check out this super short video to see the cuteness in action!