Lily's Party

I can't believe Lily is turning three.  It's just crazy to me.  I love my little girl, I don't want her to grow up. I want her to stay little and cute and fun.

It seems like I have felt this way at every milestone.  The first being 1 week old...

At some point I'm hoping I'll realize that Lily will always be little and cute and fun, no matter how old she is.

I wanted to have an actual birthday party for Lily this year.  At first, I planned for it to be a St. Patrick's Day theme and in searching on Pinterest I was finding a lot of rainbow stuff, so I changed it to be simply a rainbow theme.

On the back of Lily's invitation, it has another picture of Lily and it says:



"We'll be having a colorful lunch and decorating cupcakes. Maybe you'll find treasure at the end of a rainbow!"

Then it has our address and my phone number.




Our "colorful" lunch is going to be veggie pizza.  I'm going to cook up a couple tubes of Pillsbury Crescent Rolls dough, but leave them all connected, like a crust.  For the sauce I'm going to make a modified, thicker version of my favorite copycat Cafe Rio dressing.  Basically I'll be using sour cream instead of mayo and milk. I'll also be leaving out the hot sauce.

Then I will have a tray covered in veggies, laid out like a rainbow. We'll have an arch of finely diced tomatoes, an arch of grated carrots, an arch of yellow bell peppers, an arch of cucumbers, an arch of broccoli, and if I can find it, an arch of purple cauliflower.  On the side I'll have grated cheese, and diced scallions, just because I like those things on my veggie pizza.  Each child can put whatever veggies they want on their crust.

I am doing it this way because I am very aware of picky eaters because I am married to one.  Originally I was going to make the pizza in the shape of a rainbow.

We'll also be having a fruit salad with a citrus glaze.  I was going to layer it like a rainbow, but I'd rather have it all mixed in so it's not hard to get all the fruits.  We'll have strawberries, oranges, pineapple, blueberries, and purple grapes.  The citrus glaze is made by boiling sugar, water, citrus zest and citrus juice. Simple, but delicious.

Today I practiced the rainbow jello I'll be making.  Today I made it in a 9X13 pan, but for the party I think it would be better if each toddler had their own cup, so it will end up looking more like this:

I hope I can find small, see through cups to use! I think the ones pictured are too large, and I currently have some to-go containers for dressing but I think they are too small.

I guess worst case scenario I make enough for each toddler to have two dressing-sized containers!



I purchased some paint palettes for the cupcake decorating!  I'm really excited about this.

The cupcake will go in the center, and each divot will have different colors of sprinkles in it.

I also bought a candy that looks like a rainbow, so they can put it on top.

The end product is something like this, but with sprinkles:

But, they are toddlers, so we will see what happens.


The treasure hunt will be really simple.  It's basically, find the red balloon, find the orange balloon, etc.  The treasure they will find is gift bags filled with fun stuff for them to take home.  In the gift bags I put a mini bottle of nail polish, a 4-pack of crayons, a tiny coloring book, and a rainbow sucker.  We did invite one boy, so I made a special bag for him that has two rainbow suckers and no nail polish.



So yeah, lots of work.  So far, it might just be Lily and 2 other toddlers, and I'm OK with that.  I only bought enough stuff to have 10 kids, so I'm stressing about either no one showing up, or too many people showing up.


Heck, I'd like to come to this birthday party!