Every January I start to peruse Pinterest for brilliant birthday party ideas for my daughter’s April birthday. No, that’s not a typo. I give myself 3 1/2 months to plan this shindig every year, until this year. This year I was so clever. I had everything saved from my sister-in-law’s 40th surprise party back in September (that I started planning in March, do the math). Both ended up being a Western Cowgirl theme. (This post contains affiliate links)
I am a little bit crazy, yes, but it’s also my “creative” outlet. I’m not fancy enough to come up with all this stuff on my own, but luckily millions of Pinterest users are. And they provide me with hours and hours worth of ideas I can emulate, and put my own little twist on.
With that being said, I can’t take credit for a lot of what I’m about to show you. My mother-in-law and some good family friends made these parties come together, but I think they provided me with my very own Pinterest-worthy pics and ideas:
FIRST we started with some tables and chairs in the yard for people to sit and eat. For the 40th surprise party we rented some linen gingham tablecloths. We then made centerpieces with burlap from the fabric store running down the middle, and horseshoes to keep it all from blowing away.
You can see the bandana banner in the background, we had that strung up everywhere which added a very Western flair. These were made by cutting bandanas into triangles, and sewing them onto a ribbon (my mother-in-law).
THE mason jars were filled with wildflowers from my parent’s yard, and wrapped with burlap ribbon and some red mesh tied into a bow. Silver buttons were tied in the middle. You could use glue dots to keep it all in place, but the ribbon was wired so wasn’t necessary in our case. All in all very low cost.
WE bought a couple of pairs of cowboy boots from the local thrift store and glued some rhinestones onto them. Stick a mason jar with flowers down in the boot, and you have a fancy centerpiece.
THIS table looked pretty much the same for the 40th birthday party as well as my daughter’s 5th birthday party. Only difference (other than the wooden “40” in the middle that I covered in star scrapbook paper) was that we made the food for this one, and catered the second party from a bbq restaurant.
Keeping the food in foil pans made for easy clean up. We used bandanas as napkins, and I got some rhinestone napkin rings to add a little sparkle. The fabric store had mini hay bales that were perfect decoration for the table, and we used all our 4th of July decorations for the rest.
INSTEAD of the wooden “40” sign, I got some cowboy boot picture holders for my daughter’s party and put a collage of birthdays 1 through 4 in one, and her 5th birthday pic in the other.
WHO doesn’t have a ton of mason jars lying around their house these days? I got some cool chalkboard labels with liquid chalk markers, and put all the condiments in the jars on top of a wooden cutting board.
AND of course you’ve gotta have a bar. We ended up doing a few more dishes than I would have liked afterwards, but we used mason jars as the cups.
DESSERT was easy peasy. We had the cake and cupcakes made from a local bakery, then we made the cupcake toppers using a Silhouette Cameo. We saved the cupcake toppers and used them again for my daughter’s cupcakes. I happened to have some French Macaroons lying around so I threw those in a jar as well (I work for a food company though, so if you don’t normally have those in your house don’t worry about it)
PHOTO booth’s are so hot right now, we decided to make our own. We took some large hay bales, added a couple potted plants, hung a banner on the side of the house, and had a basket of crazy props. I got an Instax Instant Camera, and let people go to town. We hung some string up on our porch, and clipped the pictures on it with cute little mini clothes pins. Then the guests could take them with them when they left.
I’D say the biggest difference between the two parties was that we got a real live pony for my daughter’s birthday. I know that sounds a little over the top, but there’s a great company locally that will just drop him off, then come back after 3 hours and pick him up. The pony just wanders around your yard, eats your grass, and gives the kids as many pony rides as they want. I will say that this was actually my sister-in-law’s idea, but it ended up being a huge hit. And it’s surprisingly cheap… less than paying for a birthday party at Chuck-E-Cheese.
And there you have it, all the makings to throw a successful Wild West Birthday Party.
Here are some other awesome party ideas!
Construction Themed Birthday Party
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