Mom With a Glue Gun: April 2013

For my daughter's 4th birthday...she wanted a rainbow theme. If you know me, you know I love a good theme party! And when I do a theme, I do a theme, lol!!! Here are some highlights from the party!

This party was featured on Chickabug's blog! See the link here:

http://www.chickabug.com/blog/2012/08/rainbow-party-charlotte-is-4.html

And, I'll just throw out there, I've been doing a family blog for like 5 years, but this is my first venture into a how-to type blog..so, I'm learning. I'm posting past parties now...but for future parties, I may post projects as they are completed instead of all at once after the party.

The Attire

Purchased from Etsy Seller

Tickle My Tutu

The highlight of any of my parties...the dessert table

The Backdrop

Need a super easy and super cheap way to create a backdrop? Use tissue paper and foam bard to create a colorful and easy to hang backdrop. I used 4 separate pieces of foam board. After the flowers were created, I simply duct taped them to the foam board in order. You couldn't see the duct tape, so it was perfect. Once it was assembled on the floor, I hung foam board on the wall using my favorite item of all time...3M hanging strips. These are great for hanging temporary decor. They leave no marks on the wall!

The Cake

My whole inspiration for wanting to do this party was to make this rainbow cake. There is a reason this blog is called "Mom with a glue gun" and not "Mom with a spatula." I'm not a good cook and I'm certainly not a good baker. But, with Martha Stewart's white cake recipe and some food coloring, I figured I couldn't screw it up that bad..

I doubled the recipe and separated it into 6 different bowls and dyed each bowl one of the colors of the rainbow. I used Wilton gel coloring. Don't use typical food coloring liquid that you buy from the grocery store. I baked the cakes a week before the party. After they were completely cooled, I covered them in saran wrap...a lot of saran wrap and threw them in the freezer!

On their cooling racks

The night before the party, I started stacking and icing! The rosettes on the outside were beautiful but also extremely functional. While I was icing the outside, the cake was getting kind of crumbly. So, the nice white exterior icing was turning into a confetti nightmare. The rosettes hid all of the crumbs beautifully!

After we sang, "Happy Birthday, I was super nervous to cut into the cake! But, it turned out pretty decent! Not bad for a non baker!

Cupcakes in a Jar

Let's face it, we're in a mason jar craze. Everything has to be in a jar, cheesecake in a jar, cupcakes in a jar, etc. So, alright...I'm on the bandwagon. Let's make some cupcakes in a jar. These were a pain in this mom's glue gun loving ass. I made them three times...first the batter was too soupy, some were underdone. Frankly, these were a disaster. But,I was hell bent on having these on my dessert table. I finally got them to a point where they were edible and I was done. Would I make these again, no.. At least not rainbow. Because each layer had to be piped in individually. Lord, I thought my husband was going to kill me at one point.

The Cake Plate

I wanted to make something to really make our rainbow cake stand out! So, I thought I would create a "tutu" around the cake stand to mimic the tutu my daughter would be wearing.

I bought an inexpensive cake stand from Save on Crafts http://www.save-on-crafts.com/cakestand.html

With some tulle from Hobby Lobby, I made individual sections in each color. Once they were tied off with fishing line, I hot glued them to the cake plate. Hot glue did an amazing job of holding the tulle in place and then once the party was over, the tulle popped right off so we can use the cake stand again.