The Grashorn Grounds: a down on the farm birthday party

Since the boys birthdays are "relatively" close together, we tend to combine their birthday parties. With both sides of the family being out of town, this has made it convenient for them to celebrate both boys without either of the boys being left out.

This is the second year that the boys had an opinion about what type of party they wanted. Last year, they had a planet party. (You can read about it here.) This year, the boys decided that they wanted to have a farm party. They love farms. They love the idea of farming (although we think they would be much less interested if they knew how much work it ACTUALLY is). The main problem with having a farm party is that we don't actually live on a farm. We live in the burbs. With some creativity, we made do with what we had and created our own farm themed birthday. Here is a peak into their special day.

farm boys

Invitation

Using Photoshop and a picture from Slate Run farm, mom created their invitation to send out to family.

The Decorations

Name Banner:

Mom and grammy hung up their name banners that she sewed for the boys a few years ago. They are easy to pull out of hope chest to hang up for their birthdays and the boys love seeing their names hung up.

name banners

Farm Sign:
This cute chalkboard that was made out of a slate shingle from an old barn. It was a gift for being in MOPS a few years ago and it made a nice Grashorn Farm sign to welcome our guests.

grashorn farm

Paper Plate Animals:

The boys created cows, chicks, sheep, and pigs out of paper plates for the party.

the animals

The Barn:

In an ideal world, we would have had a barn for a farm party. Since we don't, that meant that we would need to create one. We decided that a display board from Target would work just fine. The boys painted it red and mom added some tape to create the doors and windows. It has the bonus of being a fun piece they can play with in the play room.

The Food

We had to mix up our standard food this year due to the boys' nap times being later. We knew the party had to be after nap, but before bedtime which meant that we needed to provide dinner. We decided to grill, which was great except for the part where it rained on dad. We had:

bratwurst/hot dogs
bulgur salad
watermelon
pretzels
lemonade/mint tea/beer

We made kix corn treats, which were like rice krispie treats, only with kix for the kids to take home as party favors.

kix corn on the cob

And, we of course, had cake. Mom made individual cakes for the boys that looked like sheep, and smaller cupcake versions for everyone else.

sheep cake

sheep cupcakes

Craft:

It's always nice to have a small activity in case it rains, which it did around supper time. Since we were going to have a hen egg hunt, we decided to keep with the theme and have everyone decorate a paper bag as a rooster to place their eggs in. The kids traced and cut out their hands, added google eyes, and a beak.

rooster bag

rooster craft

The Party

The boys were so very excited about their farm party and were thrilled to be able to help decorate and create things for it. We kept it simple, but chose to do a few things to make it feel special.

me and the farm boys

We had both sides of the family in town to celebrate, which is a party in itself. Having 12 people staying in the same house means it is busy, but an adventure.

the boys and aunt mia

Besides family, we let the boys each invite a couple of friends to the party. We really wish we could have invited all of our friends and all of their friends, but it's hard throwing a party for that many people. We are so grateful that we have so many amazing people in our lives. We really wish we could have invited everyone!

After everyone arrived, because we knew it was going to rain soon, we decided to do the hen egg hunt first.

the kids

We had enough eggs for each child to get half a dozen, which was hard for some kids to limit themselves and easier for others.

egg hunt

The boys couldn't wait to open their eggs since they had picked out starbursts for the treat inside. Luckily, grandma was keeping her eye on them and stopped them before they ate all of the candy!

candy

We then went inside and decorated the bags. It was just in time since it started to rain.

decorating bags

The boys' favorite part of the party is always singing happy birthday. They loved their cakes, although they didn't make it past eating the frosting and marshmallows off of the top.