a cowboy party

Mason changed his mind about a hundred times on what kind of party he wanted.  I asked him lots of times if he wanted to get on the computer and look at ideas, knowing that once he saw some themes played out, maybe he'd like them.  But he was stuck on a K-State party.  Even though we had that for his 3rd birthday. 

And then for awhile it was Mater.

And then dinosaurs. And Legos.

He was all over the place.

Finally I asked him to choose something and stick with it so Mommy could start planning and getting things ready.  All on his own he chose a cowboy party.

PERFECT.  I knew it would be easy and I had lots of things I could use from his nursery which was vintage cowboy themed.
Oh yeah, and with 4 days to go, he came up with The Wizard of Oz out of no where. HA! Maybe at that point he was just messing with me. But whether he was serious or not,  I got him back on the cowboy track right away (since I had already ordered a few things).

So with one week to go, I threw some things together.  But really, even if he had given me 2 weeks, I wouldn't have used the time.  I work at the last minute. 

A quick order from Oriental Trading Company got me the dessert plates, napkins, cow balloons and bandanas.  I had red and white straws leftover from Taylor's Country Fair party, and we used all of our jars for his party too.  Since they are Mason jars of course.  And then I grabbed several of the decor items that had been in Mason's nursery to use on the table as well.

This is the first time I've used fondant.  I got a mashmallow fondant recipe from a friend, and he even came and helped me decorate it.  He saved me lots of stress in trial and error, and helped make it look fabulous!

Mason was spoiled with gifts from grandmas and grandpas and aunts and uncles.

He anxiously awaited to find out what Uncle Steve was going to pull out of the bag.

His first pets - 2 dwarf frogs.

One of the parties I used for inspiration had a Marshmallow Shoutout with pvc pipe shooters.  So this was Daddy's job for the party.

He followed the instructions that I found on The Idea Room. And knocked out 10 guns in about 2 hours.  I made the tag on photoshop and we packaged marshmallows up to use as our party favor.

And then it was shootout time! (my basement may be the worst place ever for pictures, but these were just too cute not to share).

Poor birthday boy actually couldn't blow hard enough to get the marshmallows to fly out (oops, should have tested that out before hand).  So he actually had quite the birthday boy meltdown. Until we told him to just start throwing marshmallows at everyone and we stated a mandatory rule that if you got hit by Mason you had to fall down dead. He loved it! WHEW!  We redeemed ourselves.

Uncle Jim wins the prize for most dramatic death by marshmallow.

Our menu included some cowboy style food - Sloppy Joes, KFC coleslaw (our kids' favorite), baked beans, chips and root beer.

Here are a few more links...

If I had done cupcakes, I would have gotten these western cupcake liners  from Sweet Cuppin Cakes Bakery.  But we definitely do cakes more at this house.  In fact, I wouldn't mind as the kids gets older that we phase out of all the decorations and other details and just do a fun cake for each birthday.

Sometimes I do invitations, sometimes I don't.  It's just family usually, so it's easy to just email everyone.  But it is fun to do invitations when I have enough time to get one done.  I loved the invitation that was used for this Rootin Tootin Cowboy Party.  That's where I found most of my inspiration, as well as this Cowboy Party and Western Party at Kara's Party Ideas.

It was such a fun party! And we're pretty sure our birthday boy had a blast - which makes all the work worth it!