13522

Farm Party -2yr- Lawn Mower Hay Rides

May 2006

Tiffany in Queen Creek, AZ USA

Honorable Mention

For my daughter's 2nd birthday party we went all out and did a Farm party. She was really into animals so it seemed like the best idea. I had found paper products in the Target dollar section that helped tremendously finalize the plans. There were cups and plates with cows and other animals on it. 

I used inexpensive store bought invitations and headed the invitations with the line "Oink, Quack, Moo…Come Join us Briar is Turning Two." I called local cattle feed store and rented straw bales at $1 per bale and placed them in a circle in the backyard. They provided inexpensive tables and chairs.  I took a section of already made picket fence from Home Depot and placed laminated animals and barn cut outs from a teacher store and made the sign "Oink, Quack, Moo!  Briar is Two!" Our guests loved walking up and seeing the sign, it also helped direct them to the backyard where the party was held. When our guest arrived the kids were given straw hats that I purchased from Michaels. I had several activities going on throughout the yard.

I took an old saw horse and filled two household gloves with water and tied them to the saw horse. Right before the party began I poked holes in the tips of the gloves and placed milking buckets underneath them so the kids could milk the cow. I took sheets of colored foam from Michaels (a local craft store) and cut flower shapes.  I then poked a hole through the flower with a Tootsie Roll Pop and added a green leaf.  I placed several dozen of these into the ground and made a sign that said "The Briar Patch." The kids really enjoyed picking and eating these flowers.

I searched the internet for my area and discovered a traveling petting zoo.  It was reasonably priced so we had ducks, bunnies, goats, and even a lama in the backyard for the kids to enjoy. We even had pony rides that went around the yard. My husband has a riding mower so we attached our big wagon and placed straw in the bottom.  We took kids around the backyard a few at a time on a "Hay Ride."  We already had a puppet stage that looked like a barn so I went to enchantedlearning.com and printed out some cow puppet designs. 

I colored and made paper sack puppets for the kids to play with.  Those that attended that wanted to color could and made their own.  I also took a straw bale and some country looking things I had in the house and set up a picture station so that families could take pictures with the disposable camera I had for them.  I later developed the pictures and sent them in thank you notes. 

For food we had a chuck wagon food service that came and served a hot meal from the chuck wagon.  They were cowboycampfires.com.  They even worked with us to plan a meal that 2 year olds would like to eat.  We had water and lemonade in a cooler and hand sanitizer next to the chuck wagon since most of the kids were petting the animals. 

For goodie bags I went to the dollar store and purchased milking buckets.  In the buckets I filled them half full with straw and had a cow flashlight, the book Giggle, Giggle Quack (I purchased from scholastic.com) foam bandana visors, bubbles, and a small play dough. 

Instead of a Pinata I took a plastic pool and filled it with straw.  I put individually wrapped rice crispy bars in the straw as "straw bales", a took wedding bells that I got from the party store and tired cow ribbon on it, and took wedding bubbles (also from the party store)and drew black cow spots on them.  I gave the kids a lunch bag that I decorated to look like a feeding bag with their names on it and let them dig through the straw to find their goodies. 

My mother had made a barn cake and I made cupcakes that I decorated with green icing to look like grass and placed large (so they weren't a choking hazard) plastic animals on the cupcakes. We placed the cupcakes around the barn cake and it really looked like the animals were grazing next to the barn. 

We had a wonderful evening and our guest seemed to really enjoy themselves. My daughter loves to watch the video of her 2nd birthday and can tell us her favorite things from the evening.

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