ryann's rockstar fifth birthday party

Ryann doesn't turn five until Sunday, but because of when the space we wanted to use for her party was available, we celebrated this past Friday.  For the first time we held a birthday party outside of our house.  It was an experience, a little crazy for sure, but the kids had a blast and going somewhere else was definitely a good choice!

It took me a while to settle on where to have Ry's party.  She wanted to invite friends from school, and friends from dance, and friends we just hang out with.  I wasn't really sure where to draw the line, and knew it would be difficult to entertain all those kids in our house, especially if it ended up being a cold day, so going elsewhere was the thing to do.  So many places had so many rules on the amount of people, or what you can and can't do, or it just wouldn't function for kids ranging in age from 1-5.  We ended up at Rainbow Play Systems of Olathe.  My friends might smack me for sharing this little gem, but it is a business that sells swing sets and play systems, and during the week you can pay to play in their showroom.  It has been awesome during the winter, and not too busy.  Lucky for us you can also rent the space for birthday parties.  These pictures don't do it justice, the play structures are awesome and there are quite a few different structures in the showroom.

There is also a trampoline, a few more play structures and a party room.  One of the semi stressful (but not really) parts of the party, was having to make sure I brought everything with me and getting it all set-up in about 20 minutes.  Which in reality didn't happen at all.  Thank goodness for my mother.  By the time we had everything carried in and started setting up the party room guests began arriving.  So my mom took the reigns and set up all the food and decorations.  I couldn't have put on the party without her, as usual.  Knowing we wouldn't have long to set up, and that the kids honestly don't care, we kept the decorations simple.  Balloons, plastic table cloths and cute desserts.  We kept the rest of the food simple with fruit, veggies and pizza.  We ended up having tons of leftovers because the kids were more interested in playing than eating, but they all seemed happy with the options.

My friend Jenny made the cake and cookies and they were just so cute.  I can't believe I didn't get a good picture of the cake when we cut it, she made the inside tie dyed.  You can get a little glimpse of it if you check out the cupcakes she made with the leftover batter.  I made the cake topper using my silhouette, and bedazzled a candle I picked up at Target.  For the record Hobby Lobby and Wal-Mart were completely out of 5 candles.  I have no idea.  All the kiddos that came got to take home an inflatable guitar and microphone that I purchased on amazon, as well as some tattoos and beads that I picked up at Party City.

Overall the party was pretty low key, but the kids still had a blast.  They were all red cheeked and sweaty and didn't want to sit still for anything.  We had about five kiddos who were dropped off, which is another situation I haven't really dealt with before.  It wasn't a big deal, and I had said it was perfectly fine in the invitation, it just got a little hectic trying to take care of Ryann and Elsie and make sure all the other kids weren't breaking their necks.  In the end though, like I said, fun.  The whole party was fun and relatively easy.

Oh, and the rock star theme?  Ryann just randomly decided that, and it seemed easy enough, so I went with it.  There are tons of cute ideas for a rock star theme on pinterest, but the would be much more easily executed in a house.  And Party City just so happened to have those napkins and balloons that were pretty much what I was thinking in terms of color scheme.  #winning

Can't believe my girl is going to be five!!