rainbows and unicorns for a 4-year old's birthday party

She wears her tiara hung low. Do NOT try and correct her. 

Rainbows and unicorns. Unicorns and rainbows. Seeing as I grew up in the '80s (prime years, too, middle school through high school), it does me proud that my now-four-year-old loves rainbows and unicorns. Given the combination of our non-mansion house and my daughter's massive popularity (really, how does she cultivate these friendships since I'm in charge of her everything?) we opted for a family-only birthday party to keep things manageable, and so we didn't have to choose half our friends to invite and give the shaft to the rest.

Though the internet is awash with rainbow party ideas, I'll still share a bit of what we did in this post as an overview, then I'll share a different post with a bit more of the how-tos. I didn't go nuts with rainbows, just a little. And I'm terrible with the camera, so this is going to be a pretty lame post that hardly captures anything at all. Ah well, the follow-up posts will have more.

decorations

all made from mostly things I had already and with the help of my daughter

I decorated the mantle with tissue paper pom poms and strands of ribbon in rainbow colors.

My daughter and I made a rainbow paper chain, old school, to hang from the curtain rods.

I made rainbow garland from paper and strung it in the hallway. And yeah, I'm a Jersey Girl. Got a problem with that?

I also hung solid color rainbow tissue paper pom poms from the dining room light fixture.

I'm missing pictures of the tableware, but I simply bought solid color plates and napkins in red, yellow, lime, blue and purple, and served with real utensils and mason jar glasses. 

food

The party was at lunch time, so I served chicken, pasta and potato salads. I also had some cold cuts, croissants and rolls. I made pulled pork (my first attempt).  For appetizers, I laid out veggies to mimic a rainbow, as well as some chips and dips and cheese and crackers.
I used THIS RECIPE for arugula, broccoli and lemon pasta salad.
And I followed THIS RECIPE from the Beantown Baker for crock pot pulled pork. Though I cooked the pork the day before and did the last step an hour before the party. (I, too, used only black pepper since white pepper was 7 bucks a jar.)

Naturally, I had cookies. Little circles with rainbows and unicorn cookies on a stick for favors. I also made rainbow cupcakes and a rainbow layer cake. More on those in the next post. 

games

Family-only meant mostly grown-ups, so there were only three kids, mine and my two nieces. "Games" meant the girls playing. But we did set up the sprinkler and I had a rainbow pinata. Divided by only three, that meant a sweet haul per kid for pinata candy. And our yard is curiously lacking a good hangin' branch, so my husband and his brother suspended the pinata from a broom handle and held each end. In the living room. Luckily none of the girls has a far batting range.

And I had no idea anyone signed our chalkboard wall until the next day.

stay tuned for some how-tos! 
coming soon...