Rainbows and Country Halls

A few weeks before Melli's birthday we found ourselves at a sweet little Christmas fete held at a country hall not too far from home. I had both Christmas and her birthday on my mind, and I jotted down the phone number of the hall with the idea that it might be a venue for hosting her party this year. By the end of the weekend I'd booked the hall, printed out some invites for little school friends and handed them just as school broke up for the year. Nothing like a deadline to help make a decision.

This is the first time I've hired a hall, but in the years I've been living on the North Coast I would estimate I've visited one of our many local halls for some event or another on average at least every month. There's art, craft and vintage fairs; gigs and performances, film nights and festivals, weddings and parties... These old country halls are just as relevant today as they were when they were first built - they provide a place for a small community to join together and it felt like a great solution for a party where we wanted to invite her kindy class but didn't know how the weather would play out (December/January weather up here can be so unpredictable. Dry heatwaves one day, flood-watch the next). 

The hall option was affordable; meant no hordes of kids running riot through our tiny home; plenty of space for games and dancing and the general tearing-around that six-year-olds get up to and a pretty, vintage, all-weather venue where all I had to do at the end was sweep the floor, wipe the tables, pack the party gear away in a box and head home.

Melli and I decided on a rainbow disco party theme and, as I mentioned here, that's around the time things started getting silly. It started innocently enough with me Googling rainbow images to print onto invites, which led to me Googling rainbow birthday party ideas,  which led to me discovering a zillion rainbow-themed party ideas which led me to creating an enthusiastic "rainbow party ideas" Pinterest board which led to me threading rainbow-coloured fruit on skewers and carving a watermelon at 11pm the night before the party after having already hand-made rainbow coloured crayons and sewn rainbow bunting... Seriously, what the? I still don't know what happened to me. 

I don't think I've been this enthusiastic about a child's birthday party theme before, and even though I suspect I may be embarrassing myself by posting all of these party pictures - I can assure you this post is tame compared to what some mums get up to with their kid's rainbow parties (as I discovered via Pinterest). 

That said, we had fun getting ready for this party - including me trying to carve a watermelon basket from a whole watermelon late at night (I totally failed with the handle bit, I accidentally knifed right through the whole thing) through to Alex dipping "cake-pops" into melted chocolate and hundreds and thousands into the early hours of the morning of the party.

If you do go for a rainbow theme for a party the food doesn't have to be multi-coloured candy which is what I saw a lot of online. We had rainbow fruit skewers and natural rainbow-coloured food platters and rainbow salad sandwiches, but a lot of the food wasn't rainbow coloured at all, just set up in bright coloured plates and bowls on a blue table cloth, giving the rainbow "look" without all the food colouring and additives. 

As for the cake, I dare you to do a Google image search for rainbow cake and you will get an idea of how compelling the rainbow is. There are tens of thousands of rainbow cakes out there in Internet-land, blogged, pinned and Flickred. There are fluoro multi-layered rainbow cakes; pastel multi-layered rainbow cakes; marbled rainbow cakes; rainbow cakes depicting rainbow-land with unicorns and castles with turrets and moats; rainbows covered in lollies, rainbow cakes rolled in glitter, rainbows springing from pots of gold and rainbows floating on fluffy marshmallow clouds... 

We showed Melli a heap of different rainbow cake options and despite being prepared to go down the full rainbow path with the multi-layered cake, she steadfastly stuck with her ideal birthday cake: chocolate. In a rainbow shape. And so, that is what Alex made her. (Alex is the chef of the house, I am just the annoying person visionary who comes up with rainbow party themes...)

And behold, the rainbow cake! With candle blower-outerer assistant. The cake had more icing on it in yellow, green and purple but that bit melted a bit in the heat of the morning when Alex was decorating, oh well!

Apart from rainbow-coloured food and decorations, the party games didn't necessarily run to the theme - aside from the disco bit which, when interpreted by a bunch of six-year-olds, apparently means playing Gangnam Style repeatedly. As cute as the kids were piling up on stage doing all the moves or running around waving streamers to the beat,  I can safely say that I am not the only parent who wishes this song had never been created...

We also played freeze-dancing; had face-painting; a craft table with textas and pencils and coloured streamers, paper, paper plates and glue. We used the bigness of the hall to play What's the time Mr Wolf? and played duck, duck, goose and I brought a play parachute in bright colours and we swished that around a bit.

I think if I was to do another party in a hall like this I'd give more attention to the entertainment and games to take full advantage of the space by having some kind of performance element - a clown or singer/musician or something like that. But even without going to that expense, the kids had a ball and that's what it's all about.

And last, but not least, this is one of my favourite photos from the day:

My 83-year-old Aunty Betty. Isn't she cute?
Proving you don't have to be six to get into the rainbow party spirit.

x
Megan


More Rainbow Party Inspiration and Links:

- The bright, happy rainbow bunting in the very top photo was bought from Cam's Curlypops shop, here. It was a cinch to sew up and will be used as a permanent decoration in the girls' room.

- The Rainbow Party Ideas Pinterest board I mentioned is here (with link to a tutorial on watermelon basket carving, because you know you want to try it!)

- My Pinterest board also has a link to a set of free rainbow party printables (invites, thank you cards etc) one of which I modified to create the packaging for the rainbow crayons for the treat bags (pictured top left in the craft collage photo) I blogged about how to make the crayons here.

- Want more rainbow party inspiration? The blog post I think must have planted the rainbow fever in me, back in 2011, is over at Bron's Maxabella Loves blog - here. (Thanks, Bron!)

If I come across any more rainbow party links I'll add them to the Pinterest board.