A Dora rainbow party

When Elora turned 3 in April she decided she wanted a Dora party. I had already started planning a rainbow themed party in my head before she asked for Dora so I decided to combine the themes to make it a Dora rainbow adventure.

I bought Elora a Dora costume to wear and she looked so cute!! I decided to turn myself into a rainbow fairy and Bethany got a rainbow dress too.

 

I decided that to truly be a Dora party there had to be a map, and backpacks and an adventure. I printed out backpack's face from the Nick Jr website and then cut and glued them onto different coloured paper bags (so it was a rainbow instead of just purple), then I added a map to each bag, plus a plastic flute and star shaped sunglasses in various colours that we would need for our adventure.

The first stop was the crocodile jungle so we could incorporate Diego into things. I had a blow up crocodile we use for the pool and I found a blow up Diego on ebay (sadly neither the crocodile or Diego survived the experience!!).I put them on a blue car cover to look like water and made crepe streamer vines and big leaves out of green paper. I scattered a whole heap of plastic jungle animals in the 'water' and each child could have one but first they had to make the crocodile happy by using the flute in their backpack to make music for the crocodile. I downloaded a Dora and Diego crcodile rock song to play for this part but 24 kids playing plastic flutes is rather loud and you couldn't even hear it.

The next stop was star valley. I used the template on the Nick Jr website to cut out lots of explorer stars and drew faces on them then stuck them all around the playground at the church hall where we had the party. I also added some decorative shiny hanging stars for more effect and they actually glistened in the sun so as we walked outside to 'star valley' it was shining which was great!! Before we went outside the kids put on the star shaped glasses from their backpacks cause star valley is bright and then their job was to collect explorer stars. There was also a surpise guest in star valley beacuse swiper tried to beat us to the stars. It was my husband with a blue blindfold and gloves but Elora loved it!!

 

The last place we had to visit on our map was rainbow garden where we would find the lollies that Swiper had stolen from the lolly bags inside the rainbow pinata.

 

The kids all loved this map/backpack adventure and my girls still have their maps and use them to go on adventures in our backyard. This all actually happened halfway though the party though. To start with for when people arrived I had a craft table set up with some rainbow colouring sheets, glue and glitter and cotton balls for clouds. There was also a cookie activity table where kids could ice shortbread star cookies I made with lots of bright colours of icing and use lollies to make faces like explorer stars. There was face painting from a very talented lady who goes to my playgroup, there were lots of coloured balloons all over the floor to play with, plus plenty of food to eat.

The first game we played was pin the tail on swiper which I just printed off from the Nick Jr website and the prize was a stuffed swiper. Then Dora arrived. I found her on the internet and hired her which I was nervous about not having this person recommended by someone I knew but she was great with the kids and happily went along with what I had planned. I was hoping none of the kids freaked out and at first Elora was a bit anxious and I thought it would turn out to be a bad idea but she was so good with the kids that Elora warmed up quickly and then Dora wasn't allowed to leave her side. Once Dora arrived we played pass the backpack and I had wrapped parcels inside the backpack of Dora lip gloss bracelets and stickers for the girls wrapped in pink, and animal wristbands and Diego stickers for the boys wrapped in yellow. It was then time for our map adventure that I already shared above, followed by some singing and dancing with Dora until cake time.

 

 

Ready to grab the backpacks and head off on a rainbow adventure with Dora.

 

 

Next it was time for cake, goodbye cuddles with Dora and lolly bags to take home. I hired a friend of a friend to make the cake and she did such an amazing job, way beyond what I was expecting.

 

Originally I was going to just leave the backpack bags as the lolly bags but I saw these Dora rainbow bags and so many cute rainbow things and decided to do goodie bags as well.

The girls lolly bags. The little unicorn packet had lollies in it in shapes of rainbows, stars and unicorns.



The boys lolly bags with a sticky lizard instead of a unicorn toy and a Diego pencil instead of a Dora one.

Despite being a Dora party most of the decorating and all of the food was done in the rainbow theme. Using colours was cheaper and prettier than using Dora stuff so I used 1 Dora tablecloth for the table that had the backpacks and game things on it, a Dora scene setter for the back wall, I found a cheap Dora happy birthday sign with a rainbow on it and I got Dora and Boots helium balloons that I put on the Dora table. Everything else was rainbow.

For food I made rainbow cookies that I saw on pinterest, jelly cups that I made into a rainbow, honey joys, a fruit rainbow, fruit veggies, coloured popcorn, coloured lollies, it was fun to make it all so pretty. I also made som Dora, Boots and Diego choc pops that went home with the goody bags and some choc star pops for the table.

 

 

This party was so much fun to do and the kids all had such a great time, especially my little Elora the explorer :-)

An oceana party!!

Back at the beginning of March Bethany turned 4 and for months beforehand she had told me she wanted an oceana party. What the uninitiated may not know is that oceana is where Merliah is a mermaid princess in the Barbie movie 'A Mermaid Tale', Bethy's favourite movie, so what she wanted was mermaids. Since quite a lot of her friends are boys I added pirates to the mix as well and made it an 'under the sea' theme. This was the first party I have thrown one of my kids since I discovered the wonder that is pinterest and to be honest I was quite overwhelmed by all the amazing ideas I found on there. So overwhelmed in fact that at some points my perfectionistic streak almost drove me crazy trying to unfold the amazing vision for the party I had in my head. Something this control freak has no control over however is the weather and for the 4th year in a row it rained for Bethany's birthday party. This meant my fabulous plans for our huge backyard were all squashed into a tiny loungeroom and a back verandah and it was pretty much chaos, but the kids still had plenty of fun which is the point of a birthday party afterall.

 

Decorations

I was busy for weeks beforehand with all sorts of craft supplies making jellyfish from plastic bowls, fish from paper lanterns and paper plates, cutting sea creatures out of cardboard, and turning boxes into a pirate ship.

 

 

 

 Since we were stuck inside I got some fish covered plastic from the local cheap shop to protect the carpet!!

 

I found these inflatable mermaids on ebay and the kids loved them, my girls carried these around for days after the party.

 

Food

I found some great ideas on pinterest like a watermelon pirate ship and a capsicum octopus dip. My octopus looked rather sad but hey I tried and my hubby did the pirate ship cause I was too stressed setting up everything else by then. I made mermaid and sea creature cookies the day before which turned out well and the pirate ship jelly cups turned out great too. The cake was my major task, it looked so simple in the pictures I had as inspiration but it took me hours!!! I made the white chocolate moulds a couple of days beforehand and that was a lot trickier than I realised cause white chocolate is a lot more sensitive than milk chocolate and it kept clumping, it took 3 attempts to get it right. I have to say though that Bethany was very impressed with the final product and I was very proud of how it looked. The sand (biscuiut crumbs) obviously looked authentic too cause my nephew thought I really put sand on the cake.

 

Games

Doing the games I had planned was a bit tricky with the number of kids in a much smaller space than I had anticipated. We did pin the tail on the mermaid which worked fine, the next game was musical islands where I had pictures of treasure islands for the kids to stand on (like musical chairs) but because it was so squishy they all stayed right next to the papers and you practically had to steal one from a child to make it smaller and get anyone out so I ended up just giving out prizes when there were still a few kids left. I also had a colouring in table set up and a tattoo station and there was the pirate ship and inflatble things to play with, the pirate ship especially was a huge hit!!

 

The rest of the games were meant to be all part of a treausure hunt and you got a piece of the treasure at each stop which would have worked fine having it all set up in our very large yard but given the space we had we ended up having to do 1 activity then set up the next 1 so it didn't flow how I had planned and was very chaotic. It started with fishing using magnets to pick up plastic sea creatures that had paper clips attached to them, the kids kept what they caught. Then at each activity you picked up another prize, bubbles for tossing rings on the octopus, stickers for walking the plank etc and it ended up at the grumpy pirate (my husband) who was guarding the treasure.

 

(sorry I can't figure out how to rotate the photo)

This was a practice run at the fishing the week before the party. On the actual day there were so many kids crowded around it you can't see the container at all.

We did an octopus toss that you can just see at the bottom of this picture, then they walked the plank.

Limbo.

Treasure chest pinata.

I borrowed this treasure chest off my mum who has had it for years and put the bags of treasure inside. The girls bags had plastic jewellery in them and the boys had plastic coins and a little bendable pirate.

 

The scary pirate who had the treasure.

 

Extra Goodies

The original plan was that all the treasure bits and pieces and the pinata lollies would actually be the lolly bags as I gave them all little bags to put all their treasures in, but I couldn't help myself and did goodie bags as well and also made some mermaid and sea creature chocolate pops to take home. I found some really gorgeous things like pirate shaped chocolates, wooden mermaid bracelets, wooden pirate stamps, pencils with bobbly sea creatures on them but the pictures I had of those things seem to have vanished from my phone, most probably with the help of little fingers who like to touch my stuff!!

The bags in the process of being filled.

 

Happy snaps 

The birthday mermaid princess.

Pirate Elora and cousin Josh.

Pirate daddy.

Very excited birthday girl at cake time!!

Very blessed young lady, all the presents didn't even fit in the photo properly!!

 

It was certainly one of the most involved and time consuming parties I have ever done but I actually really enjoyed putting in all the special touches and details and Bethany absolutey loved it which made it all worthwhile.