Barnyard Bash! What a great idea this party was. It all started with finding a theme I liked for my two-year-old on Birthday Express.com. I feel in love with the party goods. I ordered invites on the Internet from Birthdayinabox.com. They have a lot of personalized items on this site. On the invites I wrote for the guest to dress in their barnyard best giving a prize for best dressed. As the children arrived I handed out white paper bags painted with cow spots and tied with raffia bows. Inside the bags were farm stickers, farm animal grabbers, bandanas, noise makers, chicken feed (Chex mix put into yellow paper cups with a chenille baby chick on top and chicken feed written on the outside of the cup), and an animal farm coloring book with crayons. Once all of the children arrived I began with the first game. EGG HUNT-I purchased white Easter eggs from Michael's just after Easter. In each egg I placed either one or two baby chenille chicks. The children must collect eggs that the farm chickens have laid about the yard. The child with the most chicks is the winner. The children caught on quick to this one because of its similarity to an Easter egg hunt. The next game was PIG RACES. This game is not only fun to play but to watch as well. Blow up large pink balloons. Attach a curly pink ribbon to one end and draw a pig face on the other. Pick a starting and ending point for the kids to try swatting the pig (balloon) to with a flyswatter. Be sure to have extra pink balloons handy. The kids sometimes hit the balloons too hard and pop them. So be ready to hand out a new one right away. FARM ANIMAL CHARADES was our third game. I simply printed out pictures of farm animals placing them in a bowl. For this game I asked the parents to act out each animal and the children to guess. The children had so much fun with this game that they wanted to act out the animals too. This game is definitely a barnyard must! The final game was PRIZES IN THE HAYSTACK, a sure win for all he children. Buy a couple of haystacks and spread it around a designated area. We also constructed a farmhouse out of an old refrigerator box for nostalgia. Hide inexpensive toys or candies under the hay. Get all the kids ready together to run into the hay and find as many toys as they can. Be sure to let the children go at the same time. Parents may need to help keep the stampede back until the signal is given. The food was simple. We served sandwiches, individually bagged chips, and milk chugs (or juice).  Cupcakes were handed out to each person. Each cupcake had white frosting, grass (coconut with green food coloring), and a vinyl farm animal on top. This party was a lot of fun for everyone!