4256

Cowgirl Rodeo (3-5yr) Hot Pink & Blue Colors

June 2002

Janine in Livermore,CA USA

Honorable Mention

Cowgirl Rodeo! My daughters, 3&5 have birthdays two days apart, so they celebrate their birthdays together at one party.  This year, my 5 year old came up with the idea of having a Cowgirl Rodeo birthday & the 3 year old requested a pink birthday.

This all seemed easy to combine, and I really enjoy creative challenges, but finding anything with a cowgirl theme, especially for young girls proved to be difficult! I began by searching the internet for an invitation. Luckily I located one invitation of a cowgirl that happened to be closing out. Pictured was a little cowgirl sitting on a fence in black and white. Some of the details like her cowboy hat were painted in and it was really sweet. I thought of catchy verbage to fit our unique party theme:"Yee haw Buckaroos, It's a cowgirl rodeo!

The invitation included words like rustle, hat and jeans, vittles, homestead, high noon and we were off! My husband and I have used small sawhorses and an old door for our "kiddie" table ever since we started having the girls parties.  It provides the perfect height for the kids.

For the table decorations, I went to my local yardage shop and bought bandana material in hot pink and  in navy blue for an accent.  I laid the blue material on the table first and then the hot pink on top of that. Then I cut small holes at the edge of the table and pulled the layers up at each corner and in the middle with raffia, tying a bow.

I really wanted something unique and colorful as opposed to the typical red and white checkered theme. Do to the lack of "cowgirl" partyware, I set solid paper navy plates on top of the hot pink table and wrapped hot pink utensils in a navy napkin and tied each set up with a raffia bow. The colors really "popped".

For the centerpiece, I just placed a couple of small 2X4 bails of hay (found at my local craft store)and some of my children's toy horses next to the bails.  We set the table under our awning which I decorated with old fashioned tissue paper flowers in hot pink (large) and navy blue(smaller).  Then I used raffia as garland to connect the flowers.

For the yard, we kicked down for bails of straw for the parents to sit on.  I have a very large oval shaped lawn area behind the patio and we cut about 24 pieces of plumbing pipe (cheap)4 feet tall and placed them into the ground around the lawn area, equidistant from eachother. I strung white rolls of tissue paper around the pipe twice and the whole lawn area looked like a corral! 

We served hot dogs, fruit salad and chips for the children and two ice cream cakes decorated with the cowgirl theme in mind.

At the end of the party, the children hit a boot piñata filled with bags of candy and toys, but REAL the favor, a hand made stick pony for each child, sewn by myself, was the hit of the party! I decided to take on the challenge of sewing 15 stick pony's in beautiful, tiny flower printed fabrics in pink, white and light blue for the girls and old fashioned browns, black and tans for the boys. 

When the guests originally arrived, greeting them on the side of our house were 15 stick ponies stuck in three bails of straw.  Both parents and children were blown away as each child got to choose any horse they liked and play with them for the duration of the party! The kids had a ball!

The time and effort making the ponies really paid off!

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