Barnyard Animals -2yr- Herd Balloon Animals

My Son was turning 2, so I wanted to do a party geared towards toddlers, but that older kids could enjoy as well.

INVITATIONS: I do usually make my own, but Celebrate Express had the cutest invites that were barn shaped and you opened the barn doors to find out the info. It had 3D animals on it. Expensive looking but very affordable. I encouraged the guests to come dressed up as a farmer. 

DECORATIONS:I bought a little people cd with on the farm songs that I played continuously during the party. The walls had red, yellow and cow patterned balloon bunches with red, yellow and white streamers swagged in between them. I bought the cow pattern balloons on ebay. I made two DUCK XING signs out of yellow posterboard, cut out in a triangle shape, I found a picture of a duck and duckling and drew them on free hand and then painted them black with a black border all around. These were hung up on the walls. I cut out a piece of cardboard in a rectangle shape with rough edges on the sides, and made a sign that said ThE FuNNy FArm. I painted it brown and used antiquing medium to give it an age look. I drew on wood grain and knots. The wording was done in white paint to look like it was painted like a child. That was hung up over the door. I bought 3 very large mylar balloon animals (cow, pig and sheep) I filled them up with helium.

The balloon weights were made to look like bales of hay (rectangle shaped wood pieces that I wrapped in yellow tissue paper, then I cut up long thin rectangle pieces of tissue paper and laid them over top of the wood and used twine to tie each end.) I used one hay bale for each animal. Two were put in the living room and one was put on the kitchen table. The kitchen table had a green table cloth on it. I used a farm animal themed napkins (which matched the invites, cake plates, pin the tail game, tattoos and loot bags. All bought at celebrate express). I had yellow or white forks and spoons and red plates and cups. The cups were suffed with a small pig, cow or horse, and a yellow napkin was put over top of it and tucked in, to make it look like a hay stilo. The kids were surprized to find them when it was time to eat. I never did the lucky plate/cup/napkin thing as they all got a prize. I also had a little peoples barn/animals and megablocks farm animals set for the kids to play with ( there was 4, 2 year olds there).

The piece de resitance was the cardboard barn I made. The kids loved playing in this and it really set the stage for the party. I used a soaker tub box and stood in on it's side. I taped up the back, I cut down the top ends to look like a barn shape. I folded the carboard and used carpenters glue ( and clamps till it dried). This took a bit of fooling around and could use two people to make it easier. The inside flap on the top was brought out front to cover the top 1/4 of the box which also covered the long flaps, this had the loft doors painted on it, the flaps were cut across to make barn doors. I bent the cardboard back a few inches from the edge so that the front part wasn't all doors, but would show some of the red.I painted the barn red (buy a quart of latex paint, rather than craft paint which will take 5 coats to get it to look nice). The roof, doors and loft doors were painted white. I use extra cardboard to cut out rectangles to outline the loft and barn doors, with the piece of board going diagonally across. I hot glued these to the barn. The barn took a while to do but turned out really nice. I also made out of cardboard a fence about 2 1/2 feet tall by 7 feet across, the sides were bent so that it stood up by itself, like a C shape. It was also painted white. We dressed in jeans, white or red tee shirts and red bandannas. I put the girls hair up in pigtails.

FOOD: I had silver buckets with red napkins in them filled with corn twists, soft candy, and muchie mix placed on the end tables for kids to munch on. I served BBQ hotdogs, hamburgers, smiley faces, coleslaw and macaroni salad for the meal. The cake: I rented a cake pan of a house. I cut the top of the roof off and made it to look like a barn. This was stood up (you have to use a sponge cake to do this). I had an empty Lego knights tin, which was shaped like a stilo, and was the perfect size. I used white, red and black icing to decorate the cake and tin. I used the flat icing tip (wilton 150) to make it look like a clapboard barn. I also made cupcakes. I bought 12 farm animal cupcake picks online(cow, pig,sheep and rooster). I used the icing tip 233 that makes it look like grass and used green icing on 6 of them for the sheep and cows, I used the same tip with yellow icing for hay for the roosters. I used chocolate icing for the pigs. These were all put on a cake board on the hutch next to the table, which also added to the decore.

GAMES: I wanted to have easy fun games the first game was Pin The Tail on the Cow, an oldie but a goodie.

The next game was Herd the Animals.There was twelve different balloons (4 of each kind) that I decorated to look like pigs, cows and roosters. The kids were told that someone left the gate opened and all the animals got loose and we had to heard the animals back into the pen. They played 3 at a time and were given a flyswatter in the shape of a hand and had to swat their animal balloons across the room to the fence enclosure, the first one to get all their type of animals across won. This was a great bit of fun! I used large label sticker paper (8x10 size) and drew out eyes, ears, nose,and mouth for the pig. Eyes, ears,nostrils, black spots and mouth for the cow. For the rooster I drew eyes, beak and caw, and the comb(thingy on the top of their heads). I first drew/cut these on cereal box cardboard to use as a template so that they would all look the same. I colored them all with markers and cut them out of the label paper with the backing still on.

The morning of the party the pig parts was stuck to pink balloons and the cow and rooster faces were stuck to white balloons. This took about a half an hour with two people doing it. I saw these same stickers on a website but shipping to canada would be $25 for $5 stickers. So I just copied them as best I could, which still came out good. But if you live in the US, buying them would be better time saver.

The last game was Crazy Chicken Egg Hunt. While the kids were eating I went around hiding eggs, one per person. When they were done eating I told them we had a crazy chicken who laid her eggs all over the house and to find one egg and see if they won a prize. Over the past month or so When ever I used eggs I carefully made a small hole in the bottom of the egg and shook out the raw egg. I cleaned and dried out the inside of the egg. I then filled all but 2 with confetti and then glued white tissue paper circles over the holes. In the last 2 I put in a tiny chenille chick. Once every one found an egg, I had them crack their egg into a frying pan. The one who had confetti got to pick out an animal tattoo, the ones who got the chicks won a prize (cow puppet,for the young kiddies, or large box of candy,for older kids). After this game we opened presents and the kids got their loot bags and played in the barn til their parents came to get them (There was 12 kids in total).

The LOOT BAGS: I had in a farm themed loot bag, a baby carboard animal book which had an animal which squeeked when you pressed in on it (for the toddlers), Farm animal stampers and gum (for the older kids), suckers, farm animal stickers, punching balloon, chocolate easter chicks, and a box of farm animal crackers. Plus they got their stuffed animals that were in their cups. I started making/buying things for this party several months before his birthday which enabled me to add a lot of personal touches. I do work 30 hours a week and have 4 kids(9,7,5,and 2). So It is not impossible!

Everyone enjoyed it. Which makes it all worth it for me! I hope I inspired someone out there! I love this site and get most of my ideas from here.