Cowboy Birthday Party Ideas

Last weekend I had my sons birthday party.  One was turning 5 and the other was turning 1 so I combined them.  I love the cowboy theme for little boys.  There is so much you can do so I thought I would share some of the things I did in case you may ever want to do that too.  Of course, I am not super original with my ideas so most of them I got from the internet and I will definitely give full credit!  Most of my ideas I got from this blog.  The lady actually made a "town" of cardboard boxes but I was only able to get one giant box so I put my town in one box and on each side I made a jail, soda saloon, best western, and the cowboy.

It honestly did not take a long time to "paint the town" (ha, wasn't that funny?).  I did it after the kids went to bed.

For the games:
I had a mining for gold game - I got a plastic bin, some play sand, some aquarium rocks and some pie tins.  I hid the rocks in the sand and set it all up on a table for the kids to see if they could get the rocks out.  They mostly just liked playing in the sand.

For the other games, I had a "lasso the horse" game where I tied our stick pony to my husband's saw horse and used a hula hoop to "lasso" the horse.

I also did a "Shooting Range" game.  This was fun.  The entire idea came from here.  She even has print outs for you to print to put around your soda can.  I didn't get a good picture of it but the kids liked it.  I used a high powered water gun to shoot the cans and it worked really well.

The decor was ridiculously simple.  I bought a few things at the party store like some plates and a few table cloths (red checkered ones are great too).  But I used my cast iron pans to put the food in.  I forgot to get any other pictures of it.  Also, in the background on the table are the "loot" bags.  This idea came from this blog. I just painted a "$" sign on the bags and tied them with twine.  I put candy and bubbles in them.

 

As for the cake, well I did not even attempt that.  My cousin is awesome and if you live in the Indy area you should call her.  Her website is here.  She did this fabulous cake which I loved (thanks again Beth).

She also did the little cake for my one-year-old to dig into.  He ate almost the entire thing.

Before:

After:

And yes, he went to sleep that night and slept the whole night through.  What can I say, the boy likes to eat. 

I almost forgot the best part - the pinata - doesn't it just make a party?  Well, my older son thinks so: