A girly horse party

We have a  horse mad 10 year old - as I guess a lot of girls her age are. Hence we had a horse party at the stables where the kids ride. But, as she pointed out, it had to be a girly one. So with the stable owner we settled on a grooming party and for decor, we headed into the vintage type look to provide a bit of retro pretty with a girly turquoise (her favorite colour) and hot pink accents - mostly in polka dots. She was involved in most of the decor and making the decorations, the choice of sweets for the sweetie buffet , making the rice crispie and chocolate drops and she helped to bake and decorate her own cake.

It was by far the easiest, quickest decor I have ever done for a party. But let me show you:

The party table with the Candy buffet

The cake - a red velvet cake with pink velvet icing on top of blue velvet cake with velvet icing.

And the inside

We used the lovely ponies/horses that the kids got for Christmas as part of the decor and used lots of doillies for the vintage touch. I also managed to get beautiful horse themed cupcake holders that we used as part of the rosettes on the party packs and to server the chocolate drops in. For the rest we used cardboard horses I bought at a craft shop, horse stickers and a variety of ribbons.

Some details of the candy buffet - I used containers I had apart from two tin buckets I bought for next to nothing at the farm shop. The tins are old milo tins that I used for last year's lego party for the boys too. The glass containers are my coffee, tea etc jars in the kitchen.

This time we bought some sweets for their looks - all the pastel colours like love mottos, milk bottles, funny faces, jelly hearts and the  UFO type lollypops that you can clearly in the very first photo of this post in the glass bottle.

The rest of the catering was super easy - hot dogs for the hunger and loads of cooldrink and water. Having no parents and older kids sure has benefits.

The girls had heaps of fun - they could ride around the arena taking turns until they had enough (this came sooner than we thought but at 33 degrees C and in the sun it may be no surprise). Then they had a class in grooming the horses and in teams 4 horses were groomed. Then one of the grooms showed them how to plait a tail and mane and they then proceeded to treat the horses as real life "my little ponies" with ribbons and plaits to their hearts content. Then a white horse stayed behind and the girls had fun drawing on him with crayons. Most of them named this as the highlight of the day.

Following on my previous post of our Candy Buffets up to now (if you have not seen it - go and have a look - it gives you a nice idea of what to do and what not to - tried and trusted)

What was offered:
Home made rice crispie cookies, homemade chocolate drops, sparkles, chomps, love mottos, milk bottles, funny faces, kit kats, elegance fruit toffeas (3 types), fruit toffee strips, jelly tubes, lucky charm sherbet, ufo lollies, coconut marshmallow - hay bales! and  jelly hearts. We also had icies because of the heat.

One has to take into account that all the girls went to the party with us and it was only us two, one of the girl's parents that are friends of ours and our au pair - so the grown up factor is sort of out.

Total hits: Sherbet (after years of this this is no surprise) and rice crispie cakes (after the boys' party this is also no surprise ).Also all those ufo lollypops were eaten mostly right there and then. I never buy lollypops anymore as they are so unpopular but it seems this type is the exception. We bought them mainly because the fit into the pastel theme.

Miss: The coconut marshmallows. Just shows that it was the parents that polished them at the boys' horse farm party.

Favorite moment: The dad that was at the party tasted funny faces for the first time on his daughters' insistence. He left our house that night with an extra unopened bag I had - he loved them.

It was wonderful to see how much the girls enjoyed the party - there were many thanks yous, and we loved it, and I want to ride toos....