preparing for Claire's 5th birthday

Every year, without fail, Claire will throw me the toughest of challenge for her birthday (last year she asked for a rainbow theme) and this year, because we bought her the movie 'Tinkerbell and the Great Fairy Rescue" last year when we were travelling, she decided that she wants a Tinkerbell theme. She won't settle for anything else. I suggested Disney Princess, Hello Kitty, Dora, etc etc but all got rejected. And since the movie was not actually shown in Singapore (I don't recall ever seeing any promotional materials on it), it was practically impossible to find merchandise on the theme. Fortunately, I have this GOOD habit of being prepared so I did ask her way in advance (probably like in Jan or something), I had plenty of time to source for things related to the theme. My only gripe - there was NOTHING that boys can have with a theme like this! Nope, nothing - not Peter Pan (not even remotely popular), not Captain Hook, not even 'Jake and the Neverland Pirate' (too new so no merchandise yet). In the end, I settled for 'Toys Story' since many boys do like Toy Story and the color themes for both are quite similar (green & yellow mostly).

So I eventually ordered the goodies from USA - I contemplated on ordering some items from a China website but given the amount of 'fake' items manufactured in that country, I really did not want to take a risk particularly if we are talking about food stuff.

Though this really should have been part of last year's party, I also attempted to bake some rainbow cupcakes so that the children can decorate them as part of the party activity - however, the colors came out too strong for my liking. I will try to bake one more round before the actual day to see if I can achieve more moderately colored rainbow cupcakes. With the cupcakes and some vanilla butter cream piping to resemble clouds in the sky, it would go with the party theme.