Bella Sara Horse Party 8yr

Bella Sara Horse Birthday Party  My daughter loves the Bella Sara trading cards, and wanted a Bella Sara themed party for her 8th birthday this year.   Invitations:  My daughter came up with the invitation design we scanned her favorite Bella Sara card and then enlarged it and replaced all of the writing on it with her party details.   Decorations:  We used pink and purple balloons and streamers, and scanned 10 of her favorite cards, blew them up into 8 x10 prints.  Her favorite one we had blown up to a poster size and had her name printed on it.  We made horse shoe decorations by gluing gold wrapping paper to poster board, and then cutting them out.  The larger ones we hung on the walls, and the smaller ones hung from the ceiling.   I bought a ton of silk flowers at the Dollar Store, and combined them with the green garlands we use at Christmas to decorate all of our doorways.  I used all of our vases and pots for the rest of the flowers to make the rooms extra pretty.  We set up our fiber optic Christmas tree and decorated it with the flowers also.  In our dining room we hung white star shaped twinkle lights which really looked great with the glass horse ornaments I found on discount after Christmas.  The horse ornaments hung down from our ceiling fan above the table.  Finally, we used my daughters horse collection to fill in anywhere they were needed.    Activities:  The first craft was my daughter's idea, and that was to create your own Bella Sara card.  We printed out blank cards and supplied colored pencils and markers to draw their own horses.  I also bought wood cut outs horseshoes off of ebay and painted them gold on one side, silver on the other, then had our guests decorate them with adhesive jewels and glitter pens.   Games:   Apple toss - I used plastic apples and had the girls try to toss them into a bucket.  The first time they did pretty good, then they had to try it blindfolded (hence the plastic apples!).  Hay dig - I filled a large basket with raffia, which looked like hay and had them dig for a prize.  For the next game I had ordered squishy horses from ebay.  These came in 8 different colors, which was perfect because we had 8 girls!  I placed the squishy horses all around the house for decorations, and I had put one of each color into a sack.  The girls each picked out a horse, and then had to find 5 more the same color around the house.  Our final game was pass the parcel.  I had wrapped up individual packs of the Bella Sara cards, and then placed them into a box and wrapped that box.  I wrapped that into another box, and then again into another.  The girls sat around in a circle and passed the parcel.  When my timer went off, whoever was holding the present got to open it  only to find another present!  Finally they got down to the last box and everyone got to open their own present.      Food:  We had carrots and dip, apples, chocolate covered and plain strawberries, and lemonade.  Instead of cake I made strawberry cupcakes with pink icing.  I used the remaining squishy horses by skewering them onto colored toothpicks and placing them into the cupcakes to look like carousel horses, and then sprinkled them with flower sprinkles.  I arranged these onto a cupcake tower.   When we open presents, I ask the girls to sit on the floor and then pull out 2 chairs.  The birthday girl sits in one, and the guest who has given her a present to open sits in the other.  It so much less confusing this way.  Favors:  Our parting gifts to the guests were the decorated horseshoes, Bella Sara cards, flower rings, horse pens (from OTC), notebooks (from dollar store bundled in packs of 3 and then decorated with horse stickers) and heart shaped horse suckers (also from OTC).