April showers bring May flowers . . . and the need for creative indoor entertainment for little ones!  I’m so excited to share with you my idea for a fun and inexpensive playdate you can host for your little ones and some friends.  April might historically be a month of rainy, cool days, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the rain and do some fun activities indoors to celebrate spring.

My overall inspiration for this party came from this rainy day birthday party.  I took some of their ideas, brought some of my own, and created what proved to be a fun, cheap party.

Decor:

These raindrops were inspired by the paint swatch mobiles I found here.  The original tutorial sewed the dots together.  I just glued the string on them, and then placed another dot on top so that the string was hidden.

I hung most of the raindrops from our light fixture in the dining room, but I also purchased some poster-board and made clouds to hang in the windows.

For the pennants, I cut triangles out of each color of cardstock and then used a needle and thread to hand sew them together.  It sounds much more difficult than it is.  Trust me, I have ZERO sewing skills.  This is easy stuff!

Crafts:

While our little baby snob isn’t old enough to do activities, there were some older children coming that I thought might need a little more entertainment.  I printed copies of these free coloring pages.  I also put out some of the blue cardstock, a bowl of the blue dots, some cotton balls (could be used as clouds in a picture), glue, tape and crayons for them to craft away!

Snacks:

It isn’t a party without some snacks!  We had rainbow colored goldfish crackers, blueberry yogurt parfaits and rainy day cupcakes!

 

I bought the cute blue bowls for the crackers and the clear cups for the yogurt parfaits.  For the parfaits I simply layered vanilla yogurt, frozen blueberries and blueberry granola into the cups.

The rainy day cupcakes were inspired by here.  I just used a simple white cake and white frosting recipe (which I will share tomorrow!) that I then sprinkled with blue and silver sprinkles (they are in the wedding aisle at Hobby Lobby).  For the clouds, I cut out clouds from the cardstock and glued them to toothpicks.

Total Cost

Package of blue shades cardstock: $1.99

Green and yellow cardstock (2 pages each): $1.50

Dot puncher: $5.99

String: $2.79

Glue: $1.19

Crayons: $1

2 pieces posterboard: $1

Clear cups: $1

Blue bowls: $2.40

Goldfish crackers: $2.75

Yogurt: $2.99

Frozen Blueberries: $2.99

Granola (from bulk bin): $3.00

Sprinkles: $4.99

Things I already had: all baking supplies for cupcakes, cupcake liners, cotton balls, tape, printer (for coloring pages), and plastic spoons, napkins and plates.

TOTAL COST: $32.59

If you are a crafter or already have art supplies, I’m positive you could do this for much less than I did.  The most expensive things were the sprinkles, of which I have a ton left over, the dot puncher and the food.

Everyone had a great time, and after all the kids were hyped up on sugar from the cupcakes, they went outside and played because of course it was bright and sunny on the day of our rainy day playdate :)