Barnyard Bash Party -2yr- Barn Door Invite

Threw a Barnyard Birthday Baa-sh for my son's 2nd birthday.  Thanks to all the Moms (and Dads, too) for their great ideas you posted on this website.  I know this is very long to read but I'm so proud that so much was accomplish for his party.  Since this was his first birthday party, I really wanted it to be special but kept to strict budget.  We decided not to throw one for his first birthday, since it would only really be for our (daddy and mommy) benefit.  The party was at his godmothers, so I spent the bulk of my budget on the petting zoo and ponies.  I got a really good deal from Party Animals Farm plus they were really friendly and super nice to all the kids and the workers were too! 

From this website, I got the idea to do a barn invitation.  I tweaked a clipart image to fit what I wanted, made the barn door bigger and created a hay bale door and cupcake weather vane with a number 2 as a candle.  Cut the barn to include the two doors to open, and used a paste spray to glue the barn to half a sheet of white cardstock that was already pre-printed with the invite wording, lined the barn to the wording on the cardstock and made sure not to spray the barn doors!  The bigger door open for the wording to the invite with a pig peaking out and the smaller door opened to the picture of the birthday boy.  I also did cut-outs (die-cuts) of a cow, a cloud, and a sun that I typed on Guess who turned two?) and used double stick foam tape to stick them on the invite.  Wording was Addison's Barnyard Birthday Baa-sh  Addison just turned two!  So saddle up and mosey on over for some fun.  There'll be ponies, a petting zoo, cake, and even ice cream too!  Moo-ve on in at 1:00 o'cluck.  The piggy said Oink, Baa, Cluck or Neigh to McMommy at --- ---- ----. 

For the decorations, I used a printer plotter to print out toddler-sized cows, ducks, pigs, and chickens and cut them to the shape of each animal and taped or staked them around the party area, Kinko's can print out large size sheets but to save money I would print as many animals that can fit on the large sheets.  Also had a lot of borrowed scarecrows staked throughout the party area.  Rented 4 straw bales to be used as extra seating and for the children's games for $4.00 a bale, found them half the cost in a different county but for my gas and time I went for the local feed store.  For the tables I used empty glass milk bottles tied with raffia and filled them with daisies from my garden, plus filled one pail with peanuts and the other with some type of mini cookies for the kids to be placed at each table, covered all the tables with red and white checkered tablecloths. 

For the food table, I served fried chicken (cluck cluck) served that in a picnic basket, baked ham (oink oink) that was on metal plate, turkey links (gobble gobble), macaroni and cheese (moo-croni and cheese), baked beans (baa-ked beans), corn on the cob (corn stalks), and potato wedges was all served in a chafing dish to keep warm, coleslaw (cole straw) and  potato and macaroni salad (old mactatoe salad) was in a plastic container that looked just like galvanized tubs, vegetable platter (vegetable patch) arranged in a square baking pan with the dip in a tiny round tin pail, and watermelon (watermoo-len) was served on a rectangle plate. 

All the food was either made by family or close family friends, the only thing I made/brought was the corn, coleslaw, and the vegetable platter.  I made little food signs for each food, the named in parenthesis, glued them on toothpicks and stuck them in tiny little clay pots that was filled with oasis so the toothpicks can stand upright and covered the oasis with green Easter grass.  I hate vegetable platters, but I served this one to look just like real vegetable patch, with each vegetable lined up in little rows, I liked how it looked so much that I even ate from it.  Used sunflowers also from my garden placed in a tall slender tin vase with raffia tied around it as a centerpiece for the food table. 

For the drink table, I got two large and one small plastic containers that looked like galvanized tubs, placed water in one large tub and small drink pouches in the other, used the small one for ice and had a garden spade as the ice scoop.  I made lemonade from the lemons in my garden and grape Kool-Aid, used the old fashioned large 3 gallon glass drink containers and had ladles to pour into pint sized mason jars, also had red plastic cups for the little ones and struck straws in a mason jar, I also made little signs for the lemonade and Kool-Aid and tied the signs around the containers with raffia. 

For the dessert table, I made cupcakes and used yellow frosting with a grass tip to make it look like hay and stuck a cow, roster, pig, or a sheep cupcake stake on each one, used the medium sized wilton cupcake tower to present the cupcakes, found two glazed pots at Wal-Mart and used them as containers for the dirt cake, got another garden spade to scoop out the dirt cake I made, used the largest wilton cupcake tower to serve the candy apples, made sugar cookies on sticks and frosted the cookies to look like the face of a cow, duck, and pig, stuck those in two large tin pails filled with oasis and topped it with green Easter grass, each cookie was wrapped in cellophane and tied with raffia with the corresponding thank you tag, the cow read Thank you so very moo-ch for coming, the duck read Duck you so very much for coming, and the pig read Th-oink you so very much for coming I also included the clipart of the animal and used a 2½ round puncher to punch out each tag. 

His birthday cake I purchased from a local bakery which received the most oohs and aahs, it was 1/4 sheet cake with a little barn place on top with horse sticking out of the barn door, a chicken at the hay bale door, a haystack and a barrel of apples next to the barn, a little pond with ducks, cows, and pigs all made out of the butter cream frosting, it was too cute.  I had little votive glasses spread them around the dessert table each one filled with one daisy floating on top.  A basket filled with different color bandannas was placed at the entrance of the party area with a signed attached that read Hey Lil Buck-A-Roos, tie one on and have some fun got those for 25¢ each from toy district in Los Angeles (LA). 

The last hour was set aside for the games, found a really cute cheap chicken that played the chicken dance when you press its wing, its eyes bulges out and its wings flap, used it to play One Hot Chick just like Hot Potato, when the music stopped the child is out but I gave each child a blow up farm animal from Oriental Trading (OT), the winner got a big stuffed chicken (LA), next game was Pie Eating Contest, if I thought this one out I would not of played it, one child got a little bit sick but the rest of the kids had fun, the winner got a $2.00 McD's gift card, the next game was blow-up version of Pin The Tail On The Donkey which I also got from OT, winner received toy tractor from the 99¢ Store. 

The next game was Seed Spitting couldn't use seeds from a seedless watermelon so the game was played with sunflower seeds, winner received a bucket of sidewalk chalk from the 99¢ Store, the last game was Moo-lah In The Hay there were three mini size hay stacks, for three different age groups, for the 2-4 I placed plastic eggs filled with Chuck E Cheese coins plus fruit roll-ups, for the 5-9 I used plastic coins from OT, did the same for 10-17 but the plastic coins were specially marked for them.  For 5-9 can exchange them for a quarter for each coin found, for the 10-17 exchanged them for 50¢ piece.  I was so surprised that the teen-agers played in all the games. 

After the games we all sang Happy Birthday" and the birthday boy blew out his candles.  The rental company gave his older brother and him one ride and then just gave the birthday boy his final ride by himself before they left.  Each favor bag was filled with a bag of cheese popcorn (LA) silly string (LA) bendable farm animal (OT) duck whistle (OT) harmonica (OT) squirting rubber duckie (OT) a plastic egg (leftovers from Easter) filled with duck rabbit or chicken shaped SweetTarts (OT) carrot sucker (OT) and a CD that I made (CD and labels were leftovers from my wedding it was to be used as favors but couldn't download the songs to them glad it wasn't wasted!  Now if I could only find a use for the last remaining blank 100 CDs) the CD label read Addison's 2nd  (used the cupcake weather vane for the two from the invite) Birthday Barnyard Baa-sh  Favorite Farmyard Songs to make the wording in the shape of a circle I used WordArt can be found in MS Office I'm sure it can be done in Mac too. 

The favor bag was a muslin bag from PaperMart in LA it looked like miniature flour sack I ironed on the birthday barn from the invite with the cow pig duck cloud and sun and over the top of the barn read Addison's 2nd Birthday Barnyard Baa-sh attach round tags that read Th-oink you with the clipart of the pig and personalized it with each child's name (to keep cost low I printed four iron-ons per each sheet).  Nothing in the favor bags was over 25¢ except for the silly string kept it under two dollars. 

With the help of my family and friends pitching in with the food and his godmother for the party location this party would not of been financially possible.  I borrowed the majority of the containers used (food drinks dessert and the snacks on the table) and made what I possible could to avoid spending.  I used a checklist and a spreadsheet to keep my sanity since I am a stay at home mom with two sons under the age of 3 so they keep me very busy and only had less then a month to prepare since Adi's Birthday is right after the holidays and who can plan a party during the holidays! 

There were well over 30 kids and 30 adults the party was a little bit too long meant it for 3 hours but it was almost 4 plus the Party Animals stayed for almost 3 hours which made me very happy (if you are in Southern California strongly suggest using Party Animals for your next Barnyard Baa-sh thanks Mike!).  Received a lot of compliments on how cute everything was and a couple of my girlfriends who are over 40 wanted a party just like this one for their next birthday.  I was just happy that my kids enjoyed it they might not remember it but their mommy and daddy do!"