Here is my older daughter at her birthday party yesterday:

We had seven of her friends over for a horse-themed birthday party. I found some horse shaped cards at Michael’s to use for the invitations (and thank you notes). We found lots of great ideas for horse-themed games and even the horse shaped cake several weeks before the party. One of the ideas was to decorate horseshoes with glitter and gems. We found the horseshoes at a pet supply store, and spray painted them white ahead of time. Then we had the girls stick on some gems and spread glitter glue:

For the first two games, we took 12 different pictures of horses from the internet and printed them off on white cardstock. We made two sets of pictures and hid them around the back yard for them to find. Then they played a game of Concentration with the pictures once they found all of them. The next game was called “Stomp the Flies” – the basic tie a balloon around your ankle and try to pop everyone else’s balloon without getting yours popped, only we used black balloons for the “flies”. We also did a sugar cube relay, putting the sugar cubes on a spoon and walking them down to the fence and back. And of course, pin the tail on the horse!! We were going to have them bob for apples, but with swine flu still going around, decided not to spread any germs. My husband came up with a variation that would have worked better if we had used a larger tub. We had 3 apples, and about six apple-sized balls in the tub. After blindfolding them, they were to find as many apples with their hands as they could in 10 seconds. It was too easy though! Fun to play in the water, I guess…

After games, it was time for cake and ice cream! This is the pink pony cake we found:

My daughter is NOT a girly-girl. She will tell you so. The pink pony cake was not her style. She wanted a brown horse with white on the nose. Here’s what we came up with:

The mane was formed out of chocolate almond bark, which actually worked rather well! I also made the eye and nostrils out of almond bark, and stuck a chocolate chip in the center for the pupil. They pretty well devoured the entire thing!

Here are all the girls (including both of mine) after opening the presents. I’d say they look like they had a great time!