Hoedown Details

Howdy, y’all!  I believe I owe you some details from the Hoedown!  So here you go…

The Invitation

I found lots of inspiration from a Hoedown featured at Country Living's website including their awesome invitation.  I made a mock-up of a similar invitation.  Originally I used gingham paper, but couldn’t find it so I recreated this one with paper I had on hand.  You can use any western inspired paper for the background.

I also made an invitation like this…

The third option was a store bought bandana print invitation. Guess which one Erin picked. Guess which one I picked. So our compromise was to paste this on the inside of the store bought invitation.

This is what I made for her thank you notes, but she decided that she wanted to write them all herself without filling in the blanks.  It took a while, but she did it! 

If you’d like a copy of one or all of these, email me and I can send it to you.  I’m not tech-savvy enough to make it a download here.  I just made them in Microsoft Word.

Upon entering the party, we tied a bandana around each girl’s neck. We invited everyone to dress in western clothes, so I opted not to give out hats in case they had their own (on top of the fact, bandanas were cheaper and I could use the extra ones for decoration).

 

The Crafts

As with most of my parties, I started it with the craft so the girls could get started while they were waiting for everyone to arrive.  I got the craft supplies from Oriental Trading.  Click on each item below for a direct link to that particular item.  If I did it over again, I would lace the journals ahead of time or at least make sure they all have a pointy piece of tape on the end to make it easy to lace.  Spent a lot of time putting tape on the laces during the party…make sure to at least do that beforehand!!

Faux Leather Journals

The girls laced and decorated the journals with foam stickers and gems.  The lace was long enough to use as a “flip in and out” bookmark.  For the end of the bookmark portion, the plan was to use beads, but we ended up tying little ribbons because the beads I had didn’t have big enough holes.  Those giant tubs of beads you grab at the craft store would definitely have big enough holes, I just didn’t have that particular kind.  Oops.

Faux Leather Bracelets

• Also decorated with gems, foam stickers and Sharpie markers

Go here for Other Faux Leather Jewelry Options

 

Activities

Loot Bag Treasure Hunt

The activity the girls liked best was when some “bandits” (my son and nephew) stole the bag of loot.  The girls chased them around a bit and got such a kick out of these masked men.

Next, the girls were given clues to find the loot bag.  They LOVED this!  They found the loot bag in our mailbox.  Inside the bag were a bunch of pennies.

Each girl was given their share of the loot and then went shopping at The Penny Store.  We put store items inside mason jars - pencils, pens, suckers, lip balm.

Lasso the Horse

I just picked up some dollar store wreaths to use as our lassos.  We had three lassos, so each girl got three tries.

Other Activities

• good old-fashioned pin the tail on the donkey
• freeze dance
• hot potato
• random time fillers: tattoos, drawing pictures, dress up with playroom costumes

 

Cow Print Goody Bags

I was lucky enough to find a farm inspired 12-pack of bags at Michael’s last year.  It included a bandana print, cow print and denim print.  Erin liked the cow print best, so we used all those for the goody bags and kept the others for another day down the road.

Another option would be to use plain brown lunch bags and tie them with rope and mark the bag “Susie’s Loot” or something like that.  You could also use the bandanas as goody bags.

Inside the Goody Bag

• faux leather journal
• faux leather bracelet
• penny store “purchases” (lip balm, pens, pencils and sucker)
• bandana
• plastic horses from the cake (dollar store)

 

Other Ideas I didn’t do, but I found along the way…

• crazy chicken laid eggs everywhere – egg hunt
• make your own trail mix
• snake in my boot – try to throw a rubber snake to land inside the boots
• pictures taken for a WANTED sign
• paint terra cotta pots for a cactus
• do panning for gold – use kiddie pool, spray paint rocks gold, add sand and water – turn in gold to buy candy, etc.
• paint a frame and add horse foam stickers or wooden horse cut out
• cowgirl hats
• use old appliance boxes to create a town or jail
• old crates, barrel, fence

There really are a ton of options to make this party special.  Pick one and ride like the wind!

To see more décor from the party go here.

Coming soon…The Mystery Party.