magical unicorn rainbow princess party

Yes, that is what Ryann deemed it.  Her magical unicorn rainbow princess party.  I of course put my own little interpretation on that, and it was more just a very colorful unicorn party.  But hey, she can call it whatever she wants.

Originally I wanted to do a pajama party the morning after Ryann's birthday.  I figured it was something good for girls and boys, we could spend her actual birthday doing fun things for Ry, and Ryann tends to love breakfast food the most.  So winning, right?  Yeah, she wasn't having it.  The unicorn party really started with a pinata.  I have no idea why she got it in her head that she needed a pinata, but when I asked her what she wanted to do at her birthday party, her only request was a unicorn pinata.  And cake.  But she was really focused on the pinata.  So long story short, we went with it.

For her party invitations I had wanted to use a unicorn silhouette, and surround it in some sort of hand drawn floral illustration.  But being the procrasitnator that I am, I couldn't execute exactly what I wanted in the amount of time I had before I wanted to send out the invites.  And Ryann wanted rainbows, so again, I went with it.  Truthfully I was almost embarrassed by the invitations I sent out, just because I felt they were kind of ridiculous with the whole unicorn and rainbows thing.  But Ryann thought they were pretty awesome, and when it all comes down to it, this is HER birthday party (even though we all know I plan slightly over the top parties for my own benefit).

Thanks to pinterest, this uncorn party became a source of inspiration for the decorations.  I didn't think I'd be able to find a unicorn head (turns out you can get one at Pottery Barn Teen, figures), so I made a glitter unicorn canvas instead.  I printed out the unicorn vector I made for the invitations, made a stencil, traced it on to a canvas, and then used mod podge to glitter the heck out of it.  Pretty sweet if you ask me :o).  And then back to my old trusty tissue poms, turned in to wall flowers.  I also searched tissue flowers on pinterest for a few other ideas on how to make them more flower like.  Ryann also requested 'strings of unicorns'.  Which resulted in me importing my unicorn into the silhouette machine software and cutting out a bunch of unicorns in a variety of colors and gluing them to a ribbon.  Voila.  Unicorn garland.  I ordered some little plastic unicorns on Amazon and fancied them up with Krylon glitter blast spray.  Do yourself a favor and spray paint your stuff gold before you use that.  I'm an idiot.  Whatever.

Our sweets (which were all REALLY good in my opinion) included golden oreo truffles, peanut butter brownies and chocolate chip m&m cookies, as well as unicorn sugar cookies from a woman in Topeka and a cake made by HyVee.  Oh that stupid cake.  I wanted to do a rainbow cake, you know, where the cake is rainbow on the inside.  But for some reason Ry saw this when I was scrolling through pinterest and decided she wanted it.  It was cute, so whatever, I went with it.  My mom went to HyVee to see if they could make one like it, and they actually had a similar cake in shades of blue on display.  Perfect!  She left feeling great about it.  She went to pick it up on Friday, and they couldn't find the cake.  Or the order.  Of course my mom started to panic, but they said they could get it done by 9am Saturday morning.  Naturally when she showed up, the colors seemed nothing like what we wanted.  My rainbow was a little more 'bright pastel'.  Not quite so bold.  They claimed they looked at the invitation for color inspiration.  I can kind of see where they were going with it, but uh, no.  Not what I was wanting or expecting.  On the plus side, because of all the issues, they ended up giving my mom the cake for free.  And it really didn't look that bad with the decor at all, but it wasn't what I wanted.  But it was free.  So yeah.

Besides desserts we had summer sausage, cheese and crackers, chips and summer salsa, fruit and fruit dip, artichoke bruschetta and Chick Fil A nuggets.  To drink we made a version of rainbow sherbert punch, and had water bottles that I exchanged the label for gold duct tape.  Well my sister did that part.  Thanks Lorin :o).  We had WAY too much food.  There were a few people who didn't make it that I thought would, and none of the kids wanted any 'regular' food.  Not to mention we always make way too much food.  But half the fun of throwing a party is getting to have the leftovers, right?

As far as activities went for the kiddos, our splurge was a face painter, and I am 100% happy that we went for it.  Ever since we went to the Halloween party at Berkeley's house, Ryann has said she wanted a face painter at her birthday.  I kept blowing it off because really, she has one (ok two! a friend from dance came!) friend her age.  So it seemed ridiculous to get too crazy.  But the week of I felt really guilty and wanted to do something to surprise her.  I wound up on a website called thumbtack and got connected with Laura Oliver of Face Fancies.  She was free and agreed to come.  Her work was amazing and Ryann LOVED it.  I'd recommend her to anyone in the KC area looking for a face painter.  We also had the pinata of steel of course.  Which the kids couldn't break and Chris wound up having to do.  And because the weather was nice enough we set up my parents bounce house too.  I think all the kiddos were happy.  Everything was great until I cut Ryann off at like her 10th piece of candy.

Oh I can't forget the awesome unicorn tops.  I contacted Christina of Olive and Birdie just over a week before the party to ask if it was possible to custom cut a unicorn applique.  She is awesome and said yes and had them to me by Wednesday.  I had her do a light pink onesie for Elsie, and then I purchased a top at Target for Ry and attached the applique myself.  Ryann had requested a princess dress so my mom made her one.  Of course she decided it was too much to play in and took it off halfway through the party, but she looked pretty fancy.

For favors we found some stuffed unicorns on clearance at Target (well, five Targets actually. Thank goodness KC has an abundance of Targets).  I painted the initials on some bags we purchased at Hobby Lobby.  The boys got paper crowns, while the girls got some pretty fancy unicorn horns that my mom and I made.  I found a couple tutorials (here and here) as well as this image for inspiration.  My mom made the horns and the ears and I added the flowers.  I'm pretty proud of how they turned out.  I need to try and get a picture of Ry and Elsie wearing them.

Aside from a few issues, and well, our plumbing backing up hours before the party thanks to someone cough MOM cough putting too much food down the disposal at once, the party went really well and I think Ryann had a good time.  Truthfully she seemed a little off the whole day, and for some reason was just a bit overtired, so I wasn't surprised when she kind of lost her cool by the end of the evening.  Overtired + overstimulated = disaster.  But she told me she loved having her face painted, loved that her friend from dance came, and got totally awesome gifts. 

Thank you to everyone who came over to celebrate with us!