A Rainbow Birthday Party...Manav turns 1 !!!

Hello my lovely readers, I know this has been my longest break yet from blogging. Well blame it on a 3weeks vacation to India, where we had both mine and Manish's sister's weddings and after returning , another 2weeks planning my baby boy's 1st birthday party and now 1week later here I am going to share the beautiful party we had. :-)

I had no clue what sort of party we wanted. I din't want any cartoon character themed party as Manav has no special interest in any as of now. All kinds of ideas and themes kept zooming in and out of my imagination. 
Finally it was his dad (Manish) who suggested we should just do a colorful party, with Rainbow colors, afterall, which kid does not love bright colors. And wow, what an idea Sirji!!! 
I wanted the party to be different and a memorable one for us and our guests. I wasn't gonna just buy any party stuff and decorate. 
And so my hunt for good Rainbow themed decorations and party ideas started, you won't believe how many nights I stayed up browsing. I shared my ideas with my Sister and Sis-in-laws and they also loved the idea and gave plenty of suggestions. 

Our little Appu celebrated his big 1st birthday on July 11th, 2012. Being a working day and having just returned from India, we weren't ready to have a big celebration that day. So instead I made him wear a beautiful shirt that I specially ordered online from Etsy.com and bought a small 5" Chocolate Torte and made him cut the cake and eat a good spoonful :-) You can see he really enjoyed it.

Our beautiful Rainbow Party was kept for a week later, on July 21st, and we invited our close friends and colleagues. As far as Rainbow themed parties are showcased on the internet, I din't make a Rainbow cake, I dint have any Rainbow shaped decorations etc but I made sure everything included all the Rainbow colors.

The night before the party I had a friend of mine stay over and while I decorated and arranged the cake, she and Manish was busy blowing balloons, setting up pictures collages , arranging the fruit bouquet , baby-sitting etc etc :-) 
I made my favorite Chocolate-Banana cake , two 10" cakes and two 6" cakes sandwiched between yummy chocolate buttercream , covered in homemade Marshmallow fondant. The clowns were made by me using fondant 3 days before the party, so that they set and firm up well.
The idea to get balloons coming out the cake simply occurred to me one day, and I thought that would look great with all Rainbow colored balloons coming out from the Birthday Cake. The cake was really tall and looked absolutely stunning, what do you think?

The Cake Table was arranged using The Birthday Cake with colorful balloons and clowns surrounded by Rainbow colored Daisies, a colorful French Macaron tower (which I ordered from a local bakery) and a beautiful Rainbow Fruit Bouquet ( Grape(violet), Blueberries(blue), Honeydew melon(green), Pineapple(yellow), Musk Melon(orange) and Strawberries(red) ).
As per my initial plan I was supposed to have a tray of Rainbow colored chips : Blue and Green Corn chips , Yellow and Orange Potato chips and Red Beetroot chips arranged in a Rainbow fashion...but things got messed up at the end and I had no idea where my tray went and where the chips went :-) But nevertheless I felt the Cake table was arranged very colorfully.

I made the Happy Birthday banner that you see below using Card Stock :-) Couldnt get a better picture. 

For some fun for the little ones we hired a Face Painter - Balloon twister and they all had a great time....Even little Appu got a Balloon bracelet which he seemed to have really enjoyed ;-)

Our little Appu was so happy throughout, and happily cut the cake and ate a nice big slice himself :-) Everyone sang Happy Birthday so beautifully, thank you all :-)

Before cutting the cake, I took out the helium filled balloons inserted into the cake and sent them into the air, which everyone thought was a cool idea and then we cut the cake.

Even the cutlery was bought in all Rainbow colors, we bought some plates with 'Happy Birthday' written on it and other plates in solid Rainbow colors. However we din't get enough pics of everything :-)

The food was Indian, which was all ordered from a nearby Indian restaurant, and the food was amazing. The menu included:
Appetizer: Freshly made Samosa chaat and Batata Puri Chaat

Main Course:  Veg Biriyani, Raita, Chana-Batura, Chilli chicken and Tandoori chicken 
Dessert :  Kesar and Mango kulfi for dessert and Mango lassi

We got these beautiful colorful goody bags and for the return gifts we selected mostly everything that had something to do with Colors, like color pencils, sketch pens, crayons, coloring books, painting sets, baby books related to Colors, colorful toys , colorful candles and picture frames etc . Our Thank you card had a lovely rainbow lollipop on it, so we got actual Rainbow Lollipops too for all the little goody bags :-)

We had a cute autograph frame which we wanted our guests to fill for Manav which everyone thought was a really cool idea. Thanks for hubby dear for the neat idea.

Our little Appu was very happy with all his gifts and was literally digging into them as you can see ;-)

We had also displayed beautiful pictures of Appu from 1st month to 12th month, but I forgot to take snaps of those...I'm thinking of arranging them on a frame soon.

All in all our Rainbow party was a huge success, I'm so glad that all our efforts payed off well and that everyone enjoyed their time , even our little Appu! Hope you all enjoyed it too and got few good tips if you are planning on a colorful party soon. :-)

As its too much information to add in one post, I'll soon include recipes for :
1. My favorite Chocolate-Banana Cake (which is the same cake I used for my Baby Crib Cake too)
2. How to make a beautiful Fruit Bouquet yourself.

I hope to be more regular with blogging from now on...so how have you all been? :-)

***Updated : Feb 15th,2013***
A blog reader who loved this rainbow birthday party theme, did the same theme for her son's first b'day. I was so happy to help her with suggestions and ideas for the big day. A big thank you to her for loving this theme and doing it for her special occassion.
Here are a few snaps that she shared, which I really liked, of  how they setup the rainbow theme.  So here's few more ideas for you all!!


A Rainbow colored backdrop to take pics of your guests with!



Rainbow colored Soda drinks - Loved this one!!

Solid Rainbow colored plates, cups , cutlery and napkins!

-Manju