Claire Marie Farmhouse: March 2013

I love any chance I get to throw a party around here, and birthday parties are even more special because I'm always looking at it as making a memory for my kids. My little girls are obsessed with ponies and horses. Ella had a cowgirl party when she turned 5, and Heidi liked the idea of a cowgirl party for herself this year. So of course I started looking to Pinterest a couple months ago and found so many great ideas!(http://pinterest.com/smw331/cowgirl-party/)

I had to enlist my husband's help for a few things that you'll see in here too. I told him that I wanted this to be a very memorable party for not just Heidi, but all our family and friends as well. I'm not really sure what all changes are going to take place in the next year for us. Aaron will be completing his residency at LSU in the summer of 2014 and we are planning for what will happen after that. We have had a lot of great years here and made many wonderful friends, so this party was a way to show how much we appreciate all of them!

So the first thing I told Aaron we needed was a pony! Heidi has been begging for one for the longest time. We drive by a mini pony farm every day on our way to school and back. She has asked me several times if her daddy can just go by there and pick one up. We had to sell our Cheyenne last summer. She was old and not in the best health. Aaron found a nice family with several horses that wanted to buy her from us. We were all so sad to see her go.

Bye Cheyenne! :'(

But in order to have a "proper" cowgirl party, we needed a horse...right? My father-n-law had a Gelding that he had come across some time ago. Our family had met him when we went up to Arkansas for a visit last fall, and of course the girls loved him! I had to sweet talk Aaron a bit, but he called his dad and they made arrangements for him to come down before the party. We kept it a big surprise, so it was really exciting to have the girls wake up the other morning and see their Papa Ken here!

"Beau" is beautiful as you can see, and Ella's dream horse! He is so gentle and sweet, and he seems to be happy here at his new home. Beau was going to be a huge surprise to our party guests as well. I didn't tell anyone about the prospect of having a horse until I knew for sure it was going to happen.

So the other thing I felt I had to have were stick ponies for our party friends. I mean what kind of rodeo is it without any horses for everyone to ride? I was hopeful I would be able to find some at Dollar Tree, but they don't carry them this time of year...anywhere. After a couple hours or more of scouring the internet for places I might be able to buy some cheap I came to the conclusion that they were going to have to be made. I asked Aaron if he had the right equipment to carve out some horsey heads. I must have caught him in a really good mood, because he said yes he did and before I knew it, he was out there carving out all those heads...post call!

So now we were ready to have a real cowgirl rodeo with Heidi and her sweet friends. I'm so thankful that the rains held off the day of our party. It was a little chilly, but we had a great time!

I absolutely fell in love with these invitations and the rest of the party package I found from

Paiges of Style on Etsy. She was great and has so many other cute party ideas!