Simple Horse Themed Birthday Party

My son began riding horses this past spring. It is a pretty low-key activity at this point- lessons every week in the summer and every other week during the school year. He rides for about a half an hour and simply loves it! So when his birthday came around, it seemed natural to have a horse themed birthday party. At first I was hesitant- the stable is pretty far away and I was worried that it would be too expensive, but after speaking with his teacher, it turned out to be very reasonable and actually turned out to be a lot less work on my part and cheaper in the long run. AND most importantly, I did not even have to clean my house! Woohoo!! We set the date and invited 5 friends and waited for the big day to arrive.

Party Preparation

The theme of this party aside from horses, was simple. I did not go overboard with food, decorations or fancy goodie bags. Here is what I did do.

Goodie Bags

We made very simple goodie bags for the party. I am tired of all the “stuff” that comes home from parties and didn’t want to be the one sending all that “stuff” out. So each guest received a bag with some horse stickers, two small plastic horses and a wooden horseshoe we painted silver.

I created a sticker on my computer using horse graphics from PaperArtbyMC, cut them out and attached them to some brown paper lunch bags I had in the house. We added the goodies, punched a few holes in the bag and tied each one with some brown polka-dot ribbon.

The Cake

Aside from the goodie bags, the only other preparation I needed to make was the food. I bought some grapes, crackers, cheese and juice for a snack and made a horse cake. Here is how I made the cake.

I found an image my son liked from the internet, enlarged it and printed it out. I baked a regular yellow cake in a rectangular cake pan and allowed it to cool. Once it was cool, I put it in the freezer for a bit. About 20 minutes later, I took the cake out of the freezer and used a knife to trace and cut the shape of the horse’s head. I then put the cake back in the freezer for a bit.

While the cake was in the freezer and I was making the frosting, I spread some white icing on a piece of wax paper about the shape and size of the inside of the ears and the eye. I put that sheet in the freezer as well. Once it was solid- but not hard, I cut out the eye and inside of ears from the white icing.

I made chocolate frosting and iced the cake- first time for the crumb layer and then another layer on top of that. I added some black food coloring to the left over brown frosting to create the black for the mane. I used a pastry bag to add the mane, the eyeball and the nostril.

I took some sweetened coconut, put it in a large plastic bag, added some yellow food gel and shook it until all the coconut turned color. I then sprinkled the coconut around the horse head to look like hay.

That’s it! Aside from purchasing some plates and napkins, I was ready for the party!

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Today was the day and it was fantastic. The smile on my son’s face was worth it all. The children all had a great time and got a new experience some of them may never have had or will have again.