Rainbow Cupcakes

I got this idea from one of my girlfriends who did this for her daughter's birthday. First make a white cake mix as directed. You may want to use two boxes. One only yielded 15 cupcakes for me. Divide the mix evenly to bowls. Drop in food coloring. About 6 drops per bowl. It looks best the brighter it is in my opinion.

Teaspoon the different colors into the baking cups. Fill only to about 2/3 full. And cook in oven as directed from cake box.

Frost the completely cooled cupcakes.

Pour sprinkles into bowl and after frosting each cupcakes, turn over cupcakes to collect sprinkles.
Voila - end product

Here is what the cupcakes that I made looked like inside. The kindergartners who had these said they were the best cupcakes ever.

Note - you can do this as a cake as well

Little Girls Luau Birthday Party

Food:

Pigs in a blanket with ketchup and mustard

Mangoes

Pineapple

Kiwi

Strawberries

Cake- 1 9" round white cake with white frosting. We frosted the entire thing white, then dyed some of the frosting pink to make a flower. Then instead of making it a double layer cake we made a dozen cupcakes. We used vanilla frosting dyed green to frost the tops. Then we used a kitchen knife to make the veins like a leaf with yellow sprinkles to make it shine a little.

Drink- punch made with pineapple sherbet and Sierra Mist. Water with lemon slices.

Even though these were all 5-7 year old girls, they ate almost everything. It was relatively healthy too.

Decorations:

Glass stem vases with bright silk flowers

Large glass jars with sand and seashells
Palm trees (in our yard) and plastic blow-up trees

Cut-outs of flowers and tropical birds

Activities:

I cut out hundreds of flowers with bright colored cardstock with my Cricut machine. Then I got straws and cut them in 1" sections. I cut yard, and the girls made their own leis.

Painting pineapples. My daughter LOVES crafts and painting so the girls painted little wooden pineapple ornaments.

Slip-n-slide.

Pinata... a recurring theme, I know. My kids love them.

Coloring the driveway with sidewalk chalks... a big hit with the girls.
Photo shoot. After the girls made their leis, we had them put them on, put on a grass skirt and stand by the little palm trees. They got a copy of the picture with their thank you card.The last thing was flower hair barrettes that I made for everyone to take home. I made about 25 in just an hour and a half.

Little Boys Jungle Theme Party

For my 5 year old son's birthday he wants to have a jungle theme for his party.

Decorations:
Blue plastic tablecloth coming down the stairs to look like a waterfall.
Stuffed animals placed around the house.
Plastic figurines to decorate the table with the food.
Sound machine with jungle sounds.
Animal pictures. Calendars are on sale right now, so I got a Safari calendar with beautiful pictures of jungle animals.
Jungle leaves cut out with my Cricut

Activities:
Jungle Safari story- As the kids come in we're going to tell a story about jungle animals and they will all earn their own zebra print bandanna. I got zebra print material from Joann, and cut out 18" squares with my pinking edge. When these are on we'll take a head shot of each of them for a passport picture. These will be the thank you cards. Paint plaster of Paris jungle animals. I found them in the craft section of my local Wal-Mart. They were pretty inexpensive ($2.49 for 6).

Jungle search. Wal-Mart had their plastic animal toys on sale so I got plastic snakes really cheap. Everyone will search for their own snake. We might also search for alligator eggs (Easter eggs filled with various goodies.) Pin the nose on the lion- I found a cheap lion puzzle that I put together with puzzle glue. When I was done I cut out noses. Pinata- we went to our local party store, and they had lion pinatas. We may have the Jungle Book DVD or the Tarzan CD playing for those who arrive early or leave late.

Animal memory game- I used my cricut Animal Kingdom cartridge and cut out several different animals. I glued them to cardstock (and that was backed with giraffe print paper) and laminated them. The kids LOVED this.

For older children you could paint their faces to look like zebras or tigers. Make your own memory game where the kids have to match the animal picture to the animal sound or the footprint.

Food:
Funky monkey banana splits
Sandwiches- trying to come up with a fun name... any suggestions?
Jungle juice- apple cranberry juice mixed with Sprite

Tiger cake- I found the directions here.