So I am taking my memory right back with this part's birthday theme! Pre schoolers love all the classic nursery rhymes like Old MacDonald and that became the inspiration for this birthday party. All of the pictures for this party were taken indoors as we had a torrential downpour the day of the party. If you have the room it is possible to host a party that was meant to be outdoors, inside.
I had recently bought some new Wilton year books and stumbled across a barn themed cake using their stand up house pan. I managed to source a second hand one in it's original box from EBay at a very reasonable price! It seemed simple enough and at that time I had not really expanded my cake decorating skills much past the star tip! I am sure I could do a better job now but at least it looked like what it was supposed to! Wilton.com have a similar cake on their website here.
At the time my son was a pre schooler we went to various groups during the day, meeting other children and Mums, taking part in fun activities, of which one was an art club. This art club provided party packages, a selection of items that could be used to create pictures and sculptures. I thought this was perfect for pre schoolers who probably wouldn't fully understand party games but liked getting messy with glue and paint! For this barn themed party we had 3 pictures the children could recreate. The first one was a picture of a lamb that the children could decorate with white cotton wool or foam to create the lamb's coat. The second was a picture of a hen which the children could fill in with coloured pieces of paper. The final picture was of a pig, the children could stick the pig shape onto some card and then use some brown paint to create mud. We also had some black and white pictures that the children could colour in. All the materials were supplied by the art club, however, this would be very easy to recreate by scouring the net for images and printing them out as many times as you would need.
In the picture above you can see the example pictures on the window sill so that the parents would know what the children were to create. My husband made a low table which we covered with a plastic dust sheet and set up the pictures on it. On the floor we laid fabric dust sheets to protect the carpet. We used my sons plastic table for the colouring pages. A friend was kind enough to donate a couple of hay bales to make the place feel more like a farm! Plus they gave us a few extra seats. I also set up on a chair in the corner of the room a washing station. This was a washing up bowl with water, soap and towels. This worked very well considering the ages of the children present.
As you can see we also sourced farm yard party supplies. Below is a selection that are currently available.
Part of the party pack included some blow outs which are a lot of fun for little ones. It also came with a table centrepiece which I placed here on the side board. As always I like to bring a personal touch to my son's parties and created some items with the use of large cardboard boxes. On the wall is a welcome sign I made out of a piece of card. I cut the edges to look like a plank of wood and painted it a light brown colour. I then used a felt tip pen to draw on lines and knots for the wood. I then used a little white paint to write the 'Welcome' sign. I also made a sign which was going to be placed in the garden before the rain came. It was similar to the one on the wall except that I used a piece of cardboard attached to the bottom to look like a sign you might see in the ground.
I used a plant pot to house the sign! This was to direct the children (well really the Mums!) to the 'Petting Zoo'. Children love to cuddle little animals at farms, so naturally we had to have one of our own! I used 2 boxes to create a 'barn'. The first was up ended so that the opening became the doors. I then painted the box red with white crosses on the front to represent the barn doors. I took another box and cut it to size to fit on top of this one. I also cut and taped the top to form a peak for the roof. I used a lot of tape! This was painted black with the front painted red to represent the roof of the barn. I cut a whole in the front and placed a few cuddly creatures in. I then filled the barn with animal cuddlies. I used a lot of my beanie babies for this along with my son's toys. The children had great fun popping along to the 'Zoo' and having a cuddle.
The party in full swing! Lots of creating going on. I can highly recommend this style of party for little ones.
I kept the food simple, finger style but catering to the Mums that stayed and played. Lots of veggies, bread sticks, fruit and animal shaped cheese bites!
The cake was very easy to decorate. The large cake board was covered in buttercream with toasted coconut strands to represent hay. I purchased marzipan animals to save time though of course you could have a go making these out of fondant. The fence was made of bread sticks stuck together with cream cheese. Finally, the hay bales were small muffins with icing piped with a string tip.
I sadly do not have a picture of the party bags. They were purchased on EBay and had personalised tops to each bag. The contents were themed to the party.
Have a great weekend!
No comments:
Post a Comment