Raindrops

My daughter's birthday party was last month. Her rainbow birthday party. And yes, we still have most of the decorations up. I figure, I went through all that time hanging it up, I might as well stretch it until St. Patick's Day. In the photo above, you also see cloud pillows (tooth fairy pillows to be exact - given to each of her friends) and gold at the end of the rainbow. These were surprise balls with their favors inside them.

But I think one of my favorite details was the rain. I made clouds with balloons and hung rain - because you can't have a rainbow without rain.

Here's what I did. I really wanted to use recycled paper - maps would have been my first choice. However, because I procrastinated so long, I didn't have time to hunt some down. So, I bought a package of index cards at the dollar store.

All you need is string, strips of index cards (mine were about an inch wide), hole punch and a stapler. Oh, and lots of staples if you are planning on making a lot of raindrops like we did.

First, you will want to punch a hole in the middle of the strips. I used my small hole punch and it seemed to work great. The size of the hole need to be big enough to string the string through it.

Well, then you string your string through the hole in one strip.

Fold it over without creasing it and staple it together with the string running between each side of paper.

I left room between each drop. Keep stringing them on until it's the length you want. Staple one last one at the end of the string to finish it off.

Soooo easy! I think it just adds that little extra detail that makes the decorations a little more special.

I see rainbows in our future...

It's been settled. My daughter's birthday theme will be rainbows. We attended a crafty rainbow birthday party last month and I guess it made an impression. But she has her own idea of how it's going to go.

She has invited her entire preschool class - that's 18 kids not including ours. We have a decent size house, but it's winter in Washington, so there isn't going to be much room for overflow since we can't count on going outside.

She has requested one craft. And apparently that craft will be decorating their own party hat. I think it's a great idea - but I think we are going to go with stickers to avoid glue in a house with 20 kids and their parents.

She wants rainbow decorations and a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. A pinata, cake, and games will in there somewhere as well. She has even gone as far as telling me what gift we are giving her.

I think this is the first party in a while that I have the theme a month before the party... which is exciting. This means I get to actually do some planning. I'll share details here as I have them. I'm hoping to include lots of handmade goodies!