12044

Cowboys & Indians -2yr- Home Made Stick Horses

September 2005

Michelle in San Antonio, Texas USA

Honorable Mention

For my sons 2nd birthday I wanted to do Cowboys & Indians.

I purchased Invitations on clearance from Party City. I am sure I could have been more creative but I had other things I had to prepare for. I wanted my son to be the Indian chief, seeing how his birthday is after halloween, I found the pattern on sale for .99 and material at the same price per yard with the embellishments and his headpiece we had his costume for less than $10. We also wanted his female guest to be squaws and his male guest to be cowboys.

For my sons squaws we purchased the same material as my sons costume, wooden beads and indian style beaded bracelets from OT. We took the material and cut-out large oval pieces for each girl, we fringed the edges and made the same bead design on each piece and then made slits at the time of the party to fit each girl. These slid right over ea. Girl. They also received custom headbands as well. For our cowboys, we purchased red bandanas, straw cowboy hats, and badges.

Since my sons birthday is in the winter and he has asthma I wanted to keep things indoors so I rented our apartments club house. I made most of the decorations and the games. First, I collected about 8 (med) boxes from Walmart. I used 4 of the boxes for a Totem Pole, since there is writing on the boxes I had to turn them inside out (cut down one side of the box and undo the bottom of the box, the reassemble with the plain side out) I drew  different designs like and eagle and gopher etc. then painted them. Once these were dry stack and secure them with packing tape. I also added wings to the pole.

Next, I made a faux campfire since we were indoors. I gathered several larger rocks from the river, 3 large pieces of wood and some orange and yellow tissue paper. I placed the logs with tissue stuffed in the center, in the middle of my camp ground and circled it with the rocks. I then took a couple of the boxes and made some mountains to fix to the wall. My son was to have a teepee, but I goofed and bought a fitted sheet instead of a flat sheet.

Our plan was to make a teepee out of large blonde bamboo sticks and the flat sheet (stenciled with native symbols). This was to sit close to the fire and the totem pole.

I also made 4 stick horses out of old blue jeans, scrap material (leftovers from my sons costume) beads, raffia, felt, stuffing and dowels. I made a pattern of a horse head, then cut out 8 pieces from the blue jeans, added the felt for eyes and nostrils to the pattern add the mane then sew edges, leave opening so u can stuff and enough room to slip in the dowel. Sew the head shut by hand and secure with hot glue and raffia for that finishing touch. These came out great, however we purchased a special horse for the birthday boy.

I made a hitching post and let the horses rest before the races (game #1). I also made a longhorn game out of one of the boxes. Once again, turn the box inside out I drew the face of the longhorn on the box and cut out horns from another to stick in slits on the side of the box, cut out a hole for the mouth and we have game #2. Our treat bags were also made, I had some tan felt that I cut into 5x7 in. squares sewed the sides and stenciled some horses on them w/fabric paints. We filled them with candy, cowboy and indian figures and tied them off w/raffia.

For dinner we had pigs-n-blankets, baked beans, potato salad, chips, dips, chuck-wagon chicken salad sandwiches and  served in pie pans along with punch, cake and ice cream. The tables were decorated in red handkerchief style tableclothes. And the cake was made by  Lucy's which makes every one of our cakes, I took them some toys I purchased from ebay and told them to have at it. They did an awesome job!

When our guest arrived each was given an appropriate costume and got their face paintings ( war paint or mustaches). Once everyone was settled in and dressed we started the games. We started with the horse races which just ended up basically boys chasing girls and vice versa so everyone won. To get everyone settled we decided we were going to tell stories by the campfire, I had picked a few stories but one of our young cowboys was a very talented young writer so he took charge and kept the kids calm and interested till the dinner bell rang.

After dinner, we played the Longhorn game which was basically a bean bag toss each winner won a medal on a rope and everyone got more candy. Then we moved back to the campfire so we could open gifts it was a great backdrop for my sons pictures. And finally we had cake and ice cream and played some more races and toss and we final called it a night.

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