Hannah's 4th Birthday Party

This year we were able to have Hannah's birthday party on her actual birthday.  We hosted the part at our house and in our back yard.  We usually try to let the kids choose their own theme, and Hannah chose "Rainbow Dora".  Dora is of course Dora the Explorer, which Hannah loves.  She also loves rainbows.  So she just combined those two.  So it should be noted that "Rainbow Dora" is not a thing.  She just wanted a party with rainbows and Dora.

But I think we pulled it off.  Meghan made a spread of rainbow-colored food, including rainbow Oreos, and six-layered Jello cups with each layer being a different color (though you have to hold them up to the light to see them).  We also were able to rent a bounce house with both rainbow colors and Dora, which was fortunate.

I asked her what she wanted on her cake, and she told me she wanted Dora, and a rainbow, and a bounce house, and glitter and sparkles.  So... yeah.  That wasn't going to happen.  I briefly looked into how I would make a fondant bounce house on a cake before I realized I should just try to do my best and not make her exact request.  So I made a cake that focused on rainbow colors and Dora.  I acquired three Dora figurines (thanks, Craigslist), and came up with a simple design that would let me have a lot of rainbow colors without having an actual rainbow on the cake (which is surprisingly difficult to implement).  My figuring positioning idea was to have Dora and Boots on top with Swiper the Fox doing his normal sneaky fox activity by sneaking up on them from behind.  However, this was way more difficult to implement than I imagined, as I thought I could just jab him into the back of the cake, but it turned out he was too heavy for that.  So (in the middle of the night before the party, of course, because that's when I do cakes) I engineered a solution involving a harness composed of cut bamboo skewers, dental floss, and super glue, and that allowed me to position Swiper exactly where I wanted him.  It was the first cake I've done that didn't involve fondant, but I'm still pretty happy with how it turned out.


The weather was perfect, so people were able to enjoy the outdoors or hang out indoors.

She was actually slightly disappointed there wasn't a bounce house on her cake, but she got over it and was overall pleased with it.

After cake, we did presents.  She was excited to get her gifts, and Benjamin was excited to be the one to bring them over to us to open.  He tried to predict what each one was, and each time he guessed it would be a "race track", but it turns out he wasn't quite right on any of them, as no race tracks were received.  But it was cute that he was wanting to be involved.  We had a really fun party, and we were thankful to have our family and friends there to celebrate with us.