Hello lovelies, this past weekend our twins turned 6. I still can't quite believe it – it feels like yesterday that they were born and our adventure as a family began. Now they're already proper big girls, little personalities with minds of their own. And these little minds had wished for a horse party this year. We've had "Bibi und Tina" fever for ages now, and anything even remotely to do with horses goes down very well.
After a dolphin party for their 5th birthday, I found this a nice change, so we spent an afternoon together browsing Pinterest for ideas. (A little warning at this point: Pinterest with 5-to-10-year-olds is definitely to be enjoyed with caution – for some things I had to tell them straight away that my crafting, cooking, and baking skills weren't up to it :-)).
They invited 9 children (I repeat in words: NINE!!), but there are two of them and they couldn't agree on one fewer. I didn't want to be the one to cross someone off the list – we'd manage somehow – and in the end "only" 8 children came. There were more boys than girls, so it wasn't to be a pink horse party but something neutral and natural, so that everyone would like it.
As the main colors I therefore decided on natural tones like brown and beige. The decorations also consisted of apples, straw, and carrots – the things horses eat, after all. I ordered some of the items like the pom-poms, rosettes, cookie cutters, napkins, and balloons from Pinkfisch. They have a great selection and the delivery came incredibly fast, so highly recommended.
For the birthday celebration on Sunday with the family I'd baked a cake with a hidden horse – here are pictures of it:
It wasn't quite easy to cut out the horse, but it was recognized as such, so the surprise was a success.
For the kids' party, a paddock cake was requested; we'd seen it in various versions on Pinterest and I loved it too. For one thing, because it wasn't so difficult to make, and for another, because I've also moved away from the colorful fondant cakes, since the fewest children actually like them (that's my experience, at least). For the base I used a simple vegan brownie batter, with melted chocolate on top and green-tinted coconut sprinkles as grass. A few marzipan flowers and horses, of course. The fence is made of Kinder bars and pretzel sticks, the carrots are marzipan, the box is made of hazelnut chocolate bars. The girls were definitely very happy with the result:
I'd "covered" the table and our sideboard with simple kraft paper from the hardware store, and as decoration on the table there was straw, apples, mandarins, carrots of course, and horses from the Playmobil collection. The name cards were little chocolate marshmallow treats, a wooden stick, and on top a little cake doily that we stamped and wrote on.
On the buffet, besides various vegetable sticks and tomatoes, there were pretzel sticks, pretzels, apple pieces, grapes, chocolate, and gummy bears. From the past years I've learned that the children are always glad when there's something savory too. The crates, by the way, are mandarin crates that we diligently collected. Covered with brown crepe tape and lined with straw, they were the perfect decoration. For the food I simply used glasses in various sizes.
On the buffet too there were carrots, apples, and artichokes as decoration. This time I also wanted to produce as little waste as possible, so I decided against disposable tableware. The wooden tiered stands, by the way, are recycled – we'd already used them for the 4th birthday, when Papa built them for the "forest" theme.
The hobby horses didn't just serve as decoration in their "stable" – the children got to paint them and take them home, which went down really well. And it was a good activity too, and it was wonderful to see how different the works of art that came out were. The girls collected the wood in the forest with Papa, and I'd cut out the heads from white cardboard and stapled them together. The mane is made of brown crepe paper.
For further games we had classic pot-bashing, chocolate-eating (which we didn't even get around to, though), and I'd gotten a "Bibi und Tina" game that worked well as a group game. At that age it's also already important that the children have time to play freely. Despite the large number of children, that worked out wonderfully. The 2½ hours we'd planned went by very quickly and it was a wonderful afternoon.
As a little gift, each child got a bag with a horse to play with, a book, and something sweet.
If you fancy more party and decorating ideas: we love celebrating at home, whether it's the burger party with a giveaway, our new year's eve party or a festive Christmas table with easy decorating ideas. many of the principles – natural materials, less waste and a buffet that combines savory and sweet – carry over from one party to the next.
I think everyone liked it very much, and above all the birthday girls were very happy. I had an incredible amount of fun with the preparation and decoration and got completely absorbed in it. Sure, it's always a lot of work too, but I get to give my creativity free rein. And when my two then whisper in my ear in the evening, "Mama, that was the most beautiful horse party ever, you're the best mama in the world" – then of course that makes me incredibly happy. Lately I've read criticism now and then about themed birthdays and how mothers supposedly have to outdo each other. But honestly, my own mama already threw such themed parties for us, and I always found it incredibly wonderful and still happily look back on it today. I wouldn't expect anyone to throw a party like this, though, if organizing something like it isn't fun for them.
Love, Verena
This is what our invitations looked like (shame on me – I forgot to take a better picture, so here at the end!): I'd cut out a horse head with a mane from cardboard, the bridle was a candy necklace, and on the back we printed and stuck on the details:
