For our daughter's 2nd birthday party in September, my husband and I have planned a backyard barnyard celebration for 35 adults and 11 children.  Like most toddlers, our daughter loves animals and our backyard is just large enough to host the party. I found adorable invitations at SouthernOccasions.com. On them, we wrote "Here a chick, there a chick, everywhere a chick-chick! Rebecca Meaghan is down on the farm to celebrate her second birthday".  We asked everyone to wear their farmer duds. I found themed paper goods at PartyPerfection.com and am borrowing hay bales and corn stalks from a local farmer. We're going to use the hay bales to hold the birthday gifts. I'm also going to use hay in a farm animal search game. The hay will go in Rebecca's plastic swimming pool, and I'll hide sticker sheets, plastic farm animals, and mini stuffed animals (found on sale at Baby Gap for 99 cents a few months ago) under the hay. The kids will love searching for their "prizes". I bought galvanized buckets at Target for $10 and am using them to hold juice boxes, cartons of milk and sodas. I found mini galvanized buckets at Oriental Trading (Oriental.com) to hold hay sticks (pretzel sticks) and goldfish crackers. For food, I'm serving pigs in a blanket, deviled eggs, a veggie garden (vegetable crudite), mini sandwiches and chicken nuggets for the kids. I'm also making a pig face cake from two round cake pans, pink icing and a pink Snowball cake (recipe from Family.go.com), and cupcakes decorated with plastic farm animals. For decorations, I'm getting red, yellow and blue balloons at my local party store, along with red gingham tablecloths. I found poster-size farm animals at a teacher supply store to hang, and I've also made a barn out of a large cardboard refrigerator box I found, painted red and trimmed with white painter's tape. Our toddler guests will love playing inside. For favors I purchased cowboy hats, red bandanas, farm animal stickers and vinyl poseable farm animals from Oriental.com, and themed coloring books. I'm providing themed coloring printouts and crayons that I found at a dollar store, as well as farm animal books I've collected from garage sales and thrift stores. For entertainment, I've splurged and hired a children's entertainer for a hour and a half, who will dress as a cowboy and sing songs and paint the children's faces like farm animals. I'm going to try and keep the party down to 2 1/2 hours, so as not to overstimulate our younger guests, and I've borrowed a Polaroid camera to take pictures that I'll send with the thank-you notes after the party's done. The best thing about this party is that the total cost is about $400, close to what it would have cost to have it at a farm or other party place. I'm really excited and am sure our party will be a hit!