Boot Scootin' Birthday Party

So, it's no secret, I LOVE a themed party! My oldest little lady, Miss I*, is turning 3! This weekend we hosted a Boot Scootin' Birthday Party in her honor! Miss I* is a sweet girl with a BIG personality! She LOVES to dance and sing, especially to country music; so to celebrate her special day we threw a southern-country-music themed party - it was a BLAST! :)  Here's a recap of the fun!

The Decorations!

I love autumn, especially here in the mitten where the fall weather is lovely and the trees change into the most spectacular colors; so the color palette for this party was warm autumn tones; rust, sunflower gold, and deep red. Miss I* is a girly-girl in every sense of the word, so we featured lots of fall flowers and feminine colored paisley print throughout the party.

BIG thanks to my awesome Momma; she is truly my party plannin' partner and was, as always, a huge help in making this party a success! Here are the sweet centerpieces she put together. I really wanted to convey a sweet, simple, homemade aesthetic to the party and these centerpieces were just perfect!

 One empty mason jar + cut flower stems = done! :) I LOVE the way they turned out!

Across each table, we created a mock-table runner using bandannas. Super easy and very inexpensive (love that!)

This awesome archway welcomed all of our guests to the "Lucky 3" ranch :)

What's a Boot Scootin' party without some good ol' country dancin? We used an existing canopy to create a dance floor for the kiddies. They had a blast playing under here! The hay barrels also served as a great "seat of honor" for the birthday girl to sit on when she opened her presents.  I {heart} these sweet bandanna buntings. I made them myself; they were fairly easy to make and really added a lot to our decorations.

Another fun, personalized touch was the photo op we created along the back garage door. I made large "speech bubbles" containing country song lyrics, movie quotes and some common "cowboy talk" :) Guests young and old had fun posing for pictures under the captions!

A glittery "Chuck wagon" sign directed everyone to the food table. We scattered cute lil' pumpkins around to tie in the colors and added a fun menu to tell the cow pokes what chow we were servin' up :) {Lunch was served in metal pie pans for that ol' west feel!}

The Food!

Our menu: Southern Fried Chicken, Golden Nuggets {aka chicken nuggets for the kidlets}, BBQ Beans, Taters {potato salad}, Horse Feed {coleslaw, fruits & veggies}, Gigi's Special Sweet Hot Apples, and chips w/homemade salsa - yum! Drinks were sweet southern style iced tea and sarsaparillas -- Our sarsaparillas were bottles of IBC Rootbeer, Orange Crush, and H20 decorated with super cool personalized sarsaparilla labels. {Read all about the labels here}

For dessert, we served hot doughnuts and cold apple cider. Cider mills are a big part of autumn here in Michigan... is that something that people do all across the country? I'm really not sure, but they were a nice change from cake and ice cream and they really complimented our party theme - love that! :)

The Activities!

When Miss I*'s little friends arrived to the party they each received their very own horse and had the chance to dress up "country style" from a table we set up with cowboy hats, sheriff badges, bandannas and glittery star stickers. Miss I* loves to play dress up, so it was fitting to have a dress up station at her party.

The horses were a hit! The kids had a blast participating in horse races.

We also played a game of "Spin to Win" {I ordered the board from Oriental Trading here} - the way we played was, every kid gets one spin, whatever number they land on corresponds to the number of western themed "silly bands" they received. {The western theme, knock-off silly bands also came from Oriental Trading Co}

Each child decorated a pumpkin. I love doing a craft with toddlers - not only do the kids LOVE art, but they get an additional favor to take home - win, win! :)

The favorite activity of the day was definitely Miss I*s dance hall! These little party animals had a BLAST dancing all afternoon! We set up a karaoke machine, and WOW! Let me tell you; Karaoke + toddlers = the best. time. ever. Seriously! ;)   Such a fun day!

The Favors!

In addition to the horses, cowboy gear and the silly bands; each little guest took home their pumpkin, a small cowboy coloring book and crayon set {ordered here} and a package of trail mix. We put the trail mix in clear cello bags and tied each bag with shiny ribbon and a "Happy Trails" tag {from Chachke Designs}Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of the favor bags - oops!

The Wardrobes!

So the very best thing about having a mumma who designs clothes has to be that you always have the perfect outfit for very special occasions, right? ;) Here is a pic of the birthday girl in her "Cowboy Cutie" birthday party attire :)  Her shirt features 3 adorable cowboys (b/c she's 3!) and I made sure her skirt was extra twirly --just right for dancing the day away! ;) Her leather  cowboy boots were a total score from a children's resale store ($9! Yea!) and her hat was a plain child's dress up hat that I embellished  with a birthday-girl tiara to make it more special.

Not to leave baby sister out of the fun; I made little V* this sweet bandanna dress :)  She looked so cute! Her cowboy boots are from Old Navy and her hat, another resale score ($2!) ;) I was pretty sure she wouldn't wear much of the hat, so I also made V* a sunflower hair clip. Love those dimples!

 I {heart} that so many of our friends dressed up too! So fun! ;)

I know this is a super long post; but it was a super fun birthday party for a SUPER special little girl and I wanted to share all the crafty mumma goodness with you!