Barnyard Birthday Party

I was so excited when it came time to celebrate Locky’s second Birthday. Of course I was devastated that he was now turning two and my baby is growing way too fast and yes, I shed a tear or two the week leading up to the party but the excitement of throwing him a fun Birthday bash was enough to make me forget my motherly sorrow.

I decided on a Barnyard Birthday Party Theme. Locky, like most toddlers loves animal. He has lots of plastic farm animals that he loves to stand in a row, call out their names and make the corresponding sounds to them. He also has about a million and one animal books. I though it would be a super cute theme and very appropriate for his age group. I’m saving cars and pirates and all that real boy stuff for when he’s older and he can choose party themes himself. For now, mummy gets to have fun and choose the themes 😉 ha! This year he understood what a birthday was and that it was his birthday and he was the very special birthday boy. I loved watching his excitement. Ryan and I didn’t do any decorating until the boys where down for their day nap. Usually I’ve attended morning birthday parties but we decided on an afternoon party and to be honest it worked out perfect. The sun isn’t going down at the moment until 8pm so it wasn’t like it was going to get dark dark any time soon.

The main things I wanted and think are a MUST for a barnyard birthday party are:

• A super cute barnyard party cake (of course!)
• A giant farmhouse for the party table
• Stick horses!! Fun much? I think yes.
• Something cow print, anything cow print!!
• And lastly some seriously cute party bags

I decided like a maniac to make most things myself. I then decided to leave it all to the last-minute and right before party organising started the kids decided to fall sick for over a week. I started purchasing everything and making it 8 days prior to the party… Lets say I was one sleep deprived mama. I have learned my lesson. But it was all totally worth it.

I made the cake myself. I have only ever made one cake before and it certainly didn’t have any decorations on it so I purchased lots of fondant in my desired colours and hoped for the best. Pretty happy how the little animals turned out though I was up until almost 3am finishing them off because I didn’t start baking and making the fondant animals until after 9.30pm… yeah.. not sure what’s wrong with me. I work best under pressure I guess? Ha!

I didn’t have enough baking ingredients so I could only make a small cake. The cake turned out fabulous thanks to the amazingly awesome Lydia from Always Made With Love who kindly shared her cake recipe with me.

The items I made for the party where:

• Farmhouse
• Stick horses
• Party Bags
• Cow print name sign
• Birthday cake
• Painted Yellow Chicken on the table

The party bags consisted of no sweets or naughty foods. The children are too young for that in my opinion so instead I purchased a big container of plastic farm animals. Each child got about 5 farm animal each to take home end play with and the parents seemed to think it was a good idea, so I was happy about that. The kids I spotted looking into their party bags also seemed pretty excited which was great.

I didn’t bother having specific games. Two year olds don’t have much of an attention span and I couldn’t be bothered trying to tell them how to play a certain game and then have them run off and do their own thing anyway. The weather that day was amazing so the kids had a water table, a circus tent filled with small balloons to roll around in, chalk and white board to draw on, a slide (one of Locky’s birthday presents) and lots of cars, tractors and more to ride on and play in the yard with so they seemed pretty happy. Oh and of course the stick horses!

Cooper hung with the babies inside of the house by the big doors that open up to our back yard. He loved helping Locky open his presents and you know, chilling with his little friends. Loved him in his party hat. Don’t think he will be so cooperative on his first birthday but we will see. The thing I am sad about though is that I didn’t get a photo of my two boys next to each other nor of me and the boys or us as a whole family. Definitely not forgetting for Cooper’s birthday… I hope.

Overall the party was a big hit and Locky had lots of fun which was the main thing. Needless to say I had a great time planning it and organising! Looking forward to starting my birthday party planning for Coops soon!

What birthday party themes have you thrown for your kids? Did you buy all the decorations or do you get creative and make everything?