Madelyn’s Cowgirl Birthday Party!

Madelyn wanted a cowgirl birthday! These pictures are pre-website, so there aren’t any good how-to pics, but I’ll do my best to explain what I did and how I did it. Also, several of the pics turned out blurry – sorry about that, but hopefully, I can provide a bit of inspiration for other cowgirls and cowboys.

I made Madelyn’s birthday outfit by using an old jean skirt that was a bit short and gathering strips of bandanas, then sewing them onto the bottom of the skirt. I bought her an inexpensive white t-shirt and appliqued a “4” onto the front using the same bandana fabric.

We found last Halloween that Madelyn is red-dye intolerant and can turn into quite a monster when she eats anything with red food dye in it. This meant no regular birthday cake, so I put my “Cake Boss” hat on and made her a boot shaped birthday cake.

I bought a large rectangular cake pan from Hobby Lobby, then printed out a boot from clip art, enlarged to be the size of boot I wanted. I cut out the image and layed in on the cake. Then, I cut around the image. I used organic food coloring from Whole Foods to make plain white icing pink, and chocolate icing the make the M and polka dots. I used the left over mix to make cupcakes to add around it.

I also made a birthday banner by cutting pink and purple bandanas from Hobby Lobby, using pinking shears so that I wouldn’t have to hem them. I painted letters on next with black paint and sewed the triangles onto a black ribbon.

My dear friend, Julia is a tried and true cowgirl with an obsession for boots. She lent me some and I used them for decoration. I put some on the cake table with silk flowers in them and lined others up along a wall of mirrors.

I found Wanted posters at Party City and put them up with pictures of the birthday girl on them.

Julia also had a metal steer and taught all the kids how to lasso and rope it…by far, the most popular part of the party!

All the guests came dressed in their western finest and we gave them each a bandana to wear.

Then, we taught the kids the “Hoedown throw down”- they all were so fun to watch!

I set up a game of plastic horseshoes – from Wal-mart. They loved trying to get the horse shoe to stay on the stake.

I made the guests stick horses by cutting horse head images I found online out of brown felt. I sewed almost all the way around the outside of the horse head with a zig-zag stitch, then stuffed the head with batting, then sewed the head a little more, leaving just enough of a hole to hot glue the stick in. I cut out small felt circles in white and used a sharpie to color in the eyes. Then I cut and glued ribbon to make the reins. The kids loved them! They used them to ride around the party, then got to take them home for their favor. I used a mesh trash can to display them and also to have a place for them to put the horses when not in use.