Over the Rainbow

I should probably be taking a nap. I'm all done with the nasty cold Mam gave me, but daylight savings just knocks the wind out of my sails. It's like I need a whole vacation to catch up...a whole Hawai'i vacation, I think. But I'm not taking a nap. I've still got that blog post about Mam's party begging to be written. Because what if I forget that I was once a cool mom who stressed for weeks about how to make her daughter's rainbow party a rip-roaring success? That would be a pity, wouldn't it? So, without further adieu...

I'm still not one to go plunk down the money for the simplicity of Pump It Up or a party at the gym. There are no ponies, no face painting (although I'd be open to do that if I did the painting myself), not even a bouncy house. It's not that I save so much money by doing things at home. I guess it's just that I'm a really old fashioned kind of girl. I like old fashioned kinds of parties. So far, the kids - neither the birthday girl/boy or guests - have complained.

This year, I made a few changes. I'm not great at coming up with kid activities. It takes me a lot of thought to come up with things I find acceptable. I search the web, but I rarely find anything I like. So, this year, I scheduled Mam's party for a mere 90 minutes, knowing that I'd run out of things to do last year. Turns out, that's a pretty perfect amount of time to have a dozen little kids in your house.

If you've read the previous post, you've already seen the rainbow cake. As you might suspect, much of my party-organizing energy went into that. Fortunately, I had other ideas and terrific helpers in Daddy and Aunt Karen.

First, Aunt Karen and I went to work creating a chandelier in the dining room that appeared to have rain falling from it. I used a bunch of crystal prisms I'd ordered as party favors for the kids. Then I strung up some wads of batting as clouds. It ended up looking pretty cool!I'd found a sky blue tablecloth, which was already liberally stained, so I didn't worry about the kids using it at all! And I had plates in all the colors of the rainbow and Daddy graciously strung a whole rainbow of streamers across the ceiling for a cute little cake ceremony set-up.I scheduled the party for 11:30. That means I needed to provide lunch, but I figure if the kids have to eat that's at least one or two activities I don't have to think up. Food is easier.

As the kids arrived, each one got a sparkly green "leprechaun hat". I had them paint using colored ice cubs on white construction paper. I think that was frustrating for some of them since there wasn't a lot of color, but the effect was actually really nice. They also made rainbow necklaces out of Froot Loops while waiting for the other guests to show up.All told, there were 10 guests coming to the party, not counting SPENCER! or Smunch, who was scheduled to leave for baseball practice anyway. It was really sort of a challenge to keep them all in one or two rooms. In fact, one guest made it all the way to the back of the house, where he sat playing happily by himself or with Scott for the majority of the party.

Next was lunch. I made a collection of PBJ, cheese and ham and cheese sandwiches with both white and wheat bread. Birthdays are the only time my kids ever see white bread in the house, so it's a fun treat for them. I also served the rainbow-colored Goldfish crackers and fruit kabobs, neatly arranged by Aunt Karen in the colors of the rainbow, with "gold" underneath. The kids loved these. And we scooped up finished skewers as fast as we could, before they became weapons. Mam invited a few boys, after all.After lunch, the kids played a rousing game of Pin-the-Cloud-on-the-Rainbow, which was fun and took up a lot of time. Can you tell I like to keep them busy?Then I told them all a little story about the leprechaun that had stolen the gold from the end of one of those rainbows we saw in the sky last week and he ran right through our yard, dropping pieces of gold as he went. Oh gosh, how they were itching to get out the door. I couldn't give them bags fast enough! It was so nice to have them all run around in the sunshine for a little bit! Of course, sunshine also meant that the chocolate coins Grandpa had tossed around the yard were getting pretty melty. There was more than one chocolately little face out there! At least there were some plastic coins too, but I suspect they weren't nearly as coveted.Fortunately, there was the promise of cake to get them all back inside. Funny how it's no problem at all to get their attention as long as you say "cake" loudly enough.Turns out, it was hard to cut small pieces of this particular cake, so there was a lot left on the plates. Either that, or all those colors really disturbed some of the children. Not sure. And I'm not sure that I'm offended if it did either. Anyone should be suspicious of rainbow-colored food!

The end of cake quickly brought the end of the party. The prisms were cut off and distributed to some really delighted little kids and each one got a little bucket of rainbow themed goodies to take home. I'm big on trying not to give kids "junk" that their parents wish wasn't in their house. Each one got a really good pinwheel, a pad of paper (not rainbow related, but cheap and useful, I figured), a rainbow pencil, a rainbow sticker, a paper fan (O.K., this was JUNK) and a mini fuse bead set along with the prism.All in all, I think Mam had a great party. She wasn't like Smunch who sweetly thanked us for his great day, but she did seem happy and the pile of presents didn't hurt either.

I'm done now. No more crazy birthdays for another year. I'm so over the rainbow! (Read that any way you like. They're all true!)

"Surprisingly Sane"

That's how Daddy described Mam's birthday cake this year. "Compared to the castle???" he said. Well, O.K. I guess it probably seemed that way. No matter that I ended up using 6 boxes of cake mix. Seriously. I do the most ridiculous things. I made this cake twice...in part because my first cake slid off the cooling rack and had an unfortunate encounter with the countertop. In part because I decided I just didn't like what I'd created, even if I could fix the damage with frosting.

This year, Mam requested a "rainbow party", which naturally leads to a rainbow cake. How very simple! But if anyone can figure out how to make it complicated, that'd be me. So let's start here...That is a 16" round pan, which hits each side of my oven when I slide it in. And yes, that's the cake in there in all its rainbow-y glory. I split the batter from 3 white cakes into 6 and colored each one differently. Then I put each one into a Ziploc bag and "piped" them in circles...as fast as I could so the batter didn't spread too much. When it was cooked, it didn't look nearly as colorful.The whole plan here was to bake this giant circle, cut it into two semi circles and the put them together to make the cake. And, if you do the batter this way, you end up with a cake that looks just like a rainbow. I made this all up...but I'm sure I'm far from inventing the idea.You can also see that despite the browning on the outside of the cake, the colors inside were still really bright and awesome...as long as you can stomach artificial color anyway. So, the next step was to create a base and it seemed like sky blue would be the appropriate color. This is the "crumb coat" so it doesn't look pretty.Then, of course, I had to turn this into a non-crumby rainbow. I started Thursday night with the colors, but there was clearly a little problem with the structural integrity of this cake.I always consult with Daddy on these matters because I'm usually baffled by cake engineering issues. We managed to prop it up a little and put it right back in the fridge to firm up...on a board at a significant slant. It was better the next day, but the slanted board remained...all the way through the party. I managed to finish up the colors on Friday night after the kids went to bed. It was starting to look pretty good.Unlike her underwhelmed reaction to the castle cake, Mam saw this cake in the morning and said "Is that my cake???" as if she couldn't believe her good fortune.I waited until Saturday morning, before the party to add clouds. I used the bits I'd trimmed off the cake as "landscaping" for the clouds. You have to understand, that this is much scaled down from my original plan of somehow fashioning a pot of gold out of cake. I really wanted to do that and have a cloud at the other end of the rainbow, but with time running short and my ideas for making said pot running thin, I decided a rainbow on a cloud would have to do. Having just started a new cake decorating class at a cake decorating supply store meant that I found a couple of cute little leprechauns to stick in there too.Turns out, clouds require a lot of frosting. I ended up sending Daddy to the store for more sugar at the last minute. Yikes! Still. I was pretty proud of my rainbow cake, despite the carefully disguised listing to one side.It also made a lovely centerpiece on the party table.Of course, no rainbow cake is complete without rainbow birthday candles, right?And wouldn't you know it? This one turned out to be rainbows through and through...almost like I'd planned it that way or something...So, what do you think? Surprisingly sane??