Yee Haw!! For her daughter Aurora’s 3rd birthday celebration, Amy Adams lassoed together this bright and cheery Ponies and Pom-Poms inspired party. Amy went above and beyond, crafting tons of fluffy little pom-poms in happy shades of pink, green, blue and orange — such a lovely and modern color palette for a little girl! I would have loved to ride off into the sunset on one of those darling plush stick pony favors. Three cheers for ponies and poms!

PARTY HIGHLIGHTS to look out for:

• Fluffy Pom-Pom “Flowers” in Gumball Vases + adorable Pom-Topped Birthday Hats
• Cute Ponies 3 Ways: Painted, on a Stick, and a real, live Ride-along!
• Modern “3” shaped Sugar Cookies + Yarn Wrapped Paper Mache “3”
• Bright & Happy Dessert Table filled with Pom-tastic Treats & decked out with Pom Garlands

PARTY DETAILS, as told by Amy…

In deciding what activity my daughter’s daycare buddies and other friends would enjoy at a birthday party, I decided that pony rides would be fun!  Then, inspired by the prevalence of yarn pom-poms on the many craft and party styling blogs that I read regularly, I decided to combine the two ideas…. and so the festive and fun theme was born. I decided on colors of teal, hot pink, lime green, and orange. I worked with Where The Green Grass Grows on Etsy to design striking invitations and signage. The simple lines of the silhouettes with my chosen colors and the addition of a party hat on the pony served as jumping off points for my party design.

Activities

We held the party at a local equine park that includes a western-themed common area and large covered playground. This hot and sunny Las Vegas day in March was a popular day for parties; it seems that as one party left, another one came in its place. I arranged for two wonderful ponies, Buttercup and Blondie, to be available for the first hour of the party. All of the kids took their turns riding a pony, then looked at each other and ran off to conquer the playground — which was a bigger hit than expected!! In retrospect maybe the theme should have been “Ponies, Playground, and Pom-poms!”

Dessert & Table Decors

Backdrop:

• My extra tall helpers used long pieces of wood as anchors to stretch bulletin board paper behind the table.
• Pom-Pom Garland: Using a tutorial from Anders Ruff, I made yarn poms of various sizes and colors, then strung them together with yarn.
• I made a mini banner garland to accent the pom garland by folding diamonds of colored scrapbook paper over a string of yarn and gluing them to create triangles.

Table:

• Pom-pom flowers: I attached handmade poms to long wooden skewers and placed them in vases filled with gum balls.
• Ponies/Horses: Again, inspired by the many party planning blogs such as Hank and Hunt, I bought plastic toy horses (some new and some old from e-bay) and spray painted them various colors.
• For added texture and interest, I wrapped a papier-mâché “3” from Hobby Lobby with the same yarn I used to make the poms.

Dessert

Because I tend to over-plan and run out of time, I decided to buy most of the dessert table treats. (Note: I still ended up running out of time to do everything I had planned!) I served powdered donut holes, sno-balls, and cupcakes from the grocery store. The hand-carved “3” sugar cookies frosted with theme colors were purchased from a local bakery.

For me, the most special item on the dessert table was Aurora’s chocolate birthday cake with buttercream frosting. I so enjoy baking and decorating cakes and cookies — therefore I felt that I had to make at least one item on the dessert table. I challenged myself and used a smooth cake-frosting technique tutorial found on Oh Happy Day.

Sixlets and old-fashioned stick candy keeping with the color theme and placed in decorative jars rounded out the treat selection.

Food & Fun

After much playground time, lunch was served for the little ones at their own special table. They received a box lunch (tied with coordinating yarn) that consisted of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on wheat bread (cut with a flower cookie cutter), carrot sticks, and grapes. Adults were served a pita sandwich tray from the grocery deli with chips.

After lunch everyone donned their party hats to sing Happy Birthday to Aurora and eat dessert. The purchased party hats were jazzed-up with more handmade poms hot-glued to the top.

As a thank you/parting gift, every child received a stick pony. After a long, hot day full of activity, they still had ample energy to ride off into nap-time with their new friend. It was a great day and we feel so fortunate to have such a wonderful daughter and even more fortunate that she has such close friends to celebrate with.