This past weekend we celebrated my son's 3rd birthday, and since he loves horses and tractors, it was easy to decide to have a farm-themed party. While a few of the ideas were my own, some inspiration also came from friends, internet search engines and Pinterest. Getting ideas from Pinterest is easy if you have a money tree in your backyard. Unfortunately, I do not, so I improvised with some things.
Decorations - I used plain colored plastic table clothes in the primary colors and white. On the white one, my older kids colored cow spots on with a black marker. On the yellow one, they drew a duck. I bought balloons with farm animals on them from Party City, and my final finishing touch was a hula hoop with streamers that I hung from the ceiling in the kitchen, above where the food was served. Then the streamers were strung in a circle. I got lots of compliments on that. It took awhile to do, but it was so cheap! And you can use whatever color streamers will go with your theme. I stuck with the primary colors.
Food - I tried to come up with creative farm-themed names for most of the food I was serving. Little Red Hen's Chicken BBQ, Tractor Wheels for the Oreo cookies, Haystacks for rice krispie treats, Chicken Feed for Chex Mix, Old McDonald's Mac & Cheese, etc. To label the food, all I did was print tags from the computer onto brightly colored paper, again sticking with the primary colors.
Cake - I take pride in, and enjoy making, my kids' birthday cakes. For Blake's cake, I just made a regular rectangular cake, and then used food coloring to make the vanilla icing green. I iced the entire cake in green, which became the farm field. At the back of the cake, I put a pound cake, covered in chocolate icing and Twizzler Pull & Peel strands to make it red. I used 2 graham crackers for the doors and pretzel sticks to make the roof, and it became a barn. Then I washed a couple of my sons Little People farm animals and put them in front of the barn.
Activity - The best part of the party, though, was making scarecrows! Everyone brought their own clothes for their scarecrow, and I supplied the pillowcase to make the head, and the hay to stuff them all with. This is a great time of year for this, because everyone was able to take them home to decorate their house for fall! There were some very creative scarecrows! One person used just a pillowcase and made it into a cat, and another person turned their pillowcase into an owl. I found reward certificates at the dollar store, and so each scarecrow won an award for "Sportiest" or "Best Animal", etc. I had other activities planned, like playing Duck, Duck, Goose, and coloring farm pictures from a coloring book I had bought, but everyone (adults and kids alike) had so much fun with the scarecrows, that I didn't even need the other activities.