Look up “rainbow fruit sticks” and you will find hundreds of photos of neatly arranged sticks of fruit impaled upon long toothpicks in exactly rainbow coloured order, perhaps even arranged in a nice semicircle, representing the rainbow.

Certainly that is what I intended when I planned to serve rainbow colored fruit sticks at my daughter’s birthday party.  I got a watermelon, papaya, pineapple, and grapes –  green and purple.  The purple would have to do for blue, indigo and violet.   By the time I chopped the watermelon, papaya and pineapple into little cubes I gave up on cutting the grapes and also realized I would not have time to arrange the fruit on sticks.  Moreover, it was much easier to store the cut fruit in the refrigerator in separate bowls, not arranged on sticks.

Mother of invention – a party activity known as … Fruit-Stick Making!  I started explaining the rainbow motif but these kids did not follow my colour scheme.

Kids make colourful fruit sticks

Kids make colourful fruit sticks

Party Time! Kids are excited to eat their fruit sticks.

Far be it from me to tell anyone how to line up their colours, so we ended up with something like this:

Surreal Rainbow Fruit Sticks

So we had a party activity and party snack all in one.  No packaging either – we washed the sticks and have them ready for next time we buy a bunch of different coloured fruit all at the same time.