Hayla’s Inside Out / Rainbow Birthday Party

To make your own party planning easier, I’ve included links to products I purchased to throw Hayla’s Inside Out / Rainbow Birthday Party. Some of them are my Amazon Affiliate links.  

Hayla turned six this past weekend! She quickly announced to us early in the morning that she “didn’t feel 6”.

I hear you girl.

With this being our first official birthday party with Hayla, we started planning about a month in advance and found out pretty quickly just how expensive it can be to throw a party. Between renting a hall, buying a cake, food, decorations, and goody bags . . . it adds up at a ridiculously fast past. Giving your kid what they want within the price point you can handle is certainly not always easy! We ended up sticking to having a small party at home in our garage; the smaller guest list and eliminated rental fee meant we were able to focus on the other fun parts of having a party!

One of the issues we faced with her party was choosing a theme that wasn’t as mainstream as the go-to Frozen, Mickey, Hello Kitty, or Ninja Turtles. Hayla’s been obsessed with the movie Inside Out, and so are we, quite frankly, so it was an easy choice for the event. That’s pretty much where the “easy” part ended with finding pre-made party supplies, but we figured it out, with a little hard work, creativity, and compromise. And in the end, we had a super happy kid and a really great day with our closest family and friends!

Rainbow Decorations

When we struck out on finding party supplies that featured the movie characters themselves, I decided to focus on the colors that each emotion was associated with. Thankfully, colorful, rainbow patterns are a staple at any party supply store during any season, so we easily found polka dot plates and chevron napkins and cups at Walmart. The tissue paper pom poms, colorful paper goody bags, and silverware are from the Dollar Tree.

Inside Out Decorations

While the goal was to keep things simple, there still had to be enough elements from Inside Out to make our theme obvious.  Thankfully, a quick search led me to some great blogs to round out the rest of the decorations. The printable table banner and food display cards are from Mrs Kathy King; the cake toppers and goody bag thank you tags are from Delicate Construction. Everything was printed on my home printer with basic paper on normal quality print settings and came out fantastic!

Party Food 

Thankfully, having the rainbow theme as part of our party plans gave us better options for food than broccoli pizza and cotton candy. Kid-friendly foods like hot dogs, hamburger BBQ, colorful pasta salad with lots of veggies mingled with spinach dip, bread and chips, and deviled eggs to round out the table with a variety of colors.

A box of Little Hugs drinks for the kids made for quick and easy lines of rainbow colored drinks, with tea and water bottles on hand as well.

Inside Out Rainbow Cake

Of course, my favorite part of the whole process was making all of the sweets for the day! I love any excuse to bake and send a bunch of sugar-crazed kindergartners home (you’re welcome!). Hey, what are birthday parties for, right?

This cake was my problem child of love. The entire cake was homemade, using the super delicious yellow cake recipe from Bakerella. Wilton’s Color Right set made for incredibly bright and vibrant layers, stealthily hidden under my first attempt at making Swiss Meringue Buttercream. In retrospect, the adults were bigger fans of the frosting than the kids, since it’s not as sweet as traditional frosting, so next year I’ll probably do two different options.

I glued the printed cake toppers onto matching construction paper from Hayla’s craft stash and then adhered them to Chinese takeout chopsticks I had laying around the house. Wooden dowels or lollipop sticks would’ve worked too, but I was using what I could find.

To add more color and to add more nods to the other movie characters, in this case, the memory workers, I topped the cake with rainbow colored jelly beans, which also served to hide where the toppers were stuck into the cake.

Rainbow Candy Coated Marshmallows and Chocolate Bark 

Thanks to a coupon and a craft store sale, I got five bags of different colored candy melts at a really great price, so I wanted to use them in as many ways as I could. The marshmallow pops are possibly the easiest treats you’ll ever make, but they are so visually striking, everyone was impressed by them! I just melted a bag of candy melts in a double boiler, then dipped the ends of paper lollipop sticks in the melted candy to help them stay in place when pushed in the marshmallows. Once the candy holding the sticks in place are cooled and solid, dip the marshmallow pops straight down into your container of melted coating and tap off the excess. You can buy stands to keep them safe while they harden, but I just used a rectangular piece of Styrofoam.

To use up the leftover candy melts, I lined a cookie sheet with parchment paper and spread the rest of the melts in thin layers using an offset spatula. Once the top has cooled and can be touched without leaving finger prints, you’re good to pour on the next color. I let the whole tray cool completely overnight before breaking it apart into pretty pieces of rainbow chocolaty goodness.

Rainbow Goody Bags and Games

We lucked out at our local Dollar Tree and picked up the last Inside Out coloring packs that they had, which was just enough for our goody bags. The bags also had a variety of rainbow colored small toys and treats, like beads, glow sticks, notepads, play dough, pencils, Fruit Roll Ups, and rainbow GoldFish.

The girls weren’t interested in any games, choosing to grab Hayla’s bikes and scooters and battery operated Jeep, which kept them occupied in our driveway for the entire party. Once things were winding down, we broke out some of the new play dough and headed inside to watch a movie. Easy peasy.

At the end of the day, we had one happy, tired kid and two exhausted parents, which of course means that the day was a success. Here’s to the next wonderful year and all the adventures that come! Happy 6th Birthday, Hayla!

What was the theme of your last party?