Horsing Around for Ailey's 5th Birthday Party - Anders Ruff Custom Designs, LLC

Our fabulous client, Molly, blogger extraordinaire (see her blog, Pomp & Circumstance, here), wanted to throw for her daughter Ailey’s 5th, the horse party Ailey has wanted since she was two years old.

Molly purchased our Western Cowgirl birthday party invitation and asked us to design for her some coordinating printables. Yee haw!

In Molly’s words, the event went at a full speed gallop, “we had the party at Serenbe Stables in Palmetto, GA. Serenbe is a gorgeous, organic, sustainable community that has some of the most beautiful facilities, grounds, and living practices I’ve ever seen. Ailey has wanted a riding party since she was 2, so we figured for the big 5, we’d go for it!

I handmade the vintage-style horse prize ribbons for each girl to have and either wear at the party, or take home in her “goody box”. The boxes, by the way, I found at an antiques market in Atlanta…for one dollar each! I covered the table with kraft paper and re-purposed purple scrap booking paper as decorate-able place mats.

I used bamboo paper plates and bamboo utensils at each place setting, with varying shades of purple bandannas as “napkins,”or whatever girls wanted to do with them! I found the silver trophy-like vessel at the same antiques market for eight dollars and put some lavender and other purple flowers in it as a centerpiece.

We ate caramel corn, cotton candy, cake pops, a fabulous cake (made by my friend Maria in Atlanta), fresh berries, and little lunches packed for each guest. The lunch bags I embellished with printables and used pinking shears to customize the tops. There were pb&j sandwiches, pickles, fruit, and chips in each bag. The glasses on the tables are mini mason jars (and of course I couldn’t find purple striped straws until AFTER the party). Go figure!

I created a vintage looking photo timeline to hang with twine and mini-clothespins over the favor table. The favor boxes also included horses that “neigh” from the Target dollar bins (gotta love it!); Silly Bandz featuring horses; lollipops and chocolates (all purple, of course); and the horse ribbons, tied with purple and white twine from Michael’s, finished off with your amazing hang tags. The stables were such a gorgeous location that we didn’t need to do much to decorate!

All platters were from HomeGoods, as well as the dessert table linen. I wrapped the riser boxes in kraft paper and purple ribbon, and the cotton candy and caramel corn paper cones (which I made from scrapbook paper) were secured by sticking skewer sticks in to mini hay bales on the table. We took turns riding horses and doing a craft activity–decorating small horse figurines with glitter, sequins, etc.!–before having lunch and enjoying the sweets. We had a BLAST!” Molly, the party sounds absolutely amazing!

Thank you for sharing with us the details and some super pictures!