Keira’s My Little Pony 4th Birthday Party

My youngest just turned 4 and we celebrated with a colorful and girly My Little Pony themed party.  After doing a Princess themed party for the past two years, I was happy to get familiar with some different characters and start a whole new party inspiration board on Pinterest.

Invitation

I designed the invitations with a rainbow color scheme in mind.  I played off the My Little Pony logo and created the “My Little Party” graphic to use on the invitation and some of my other printables.  The invitation was a basic two sided 5″x7″ card I ordered through Staples.

Decorations

I based my color scheme off these great polka dot plates and matching striped napkins I picked up on clearance at Walmart several months ago.  The backdrop were these easy DIY Paper Bag Party Fans I crafted in matching colors.

Strung across the front of the table was a quick banner I created using scrapbook paper images of Pony’s and tassels created from the striped napkins.  Cheap and easy.

On the table were inexpensive stand-up ponies I created from wall decals stuck to dollar store foam core.  They were a bit of a pain to cut out, but the final result was well worth it to bring my theme to life.

Outside, I set up a table to put the drinks and party favors out on.  I was going to line the colorful treat bags up nicely on the table, but then decided they would make a great backdrop strung up with clothespins.

I also got around to finally making a DIY gumball machine.  The Rainbow Dash figure my daughter got out of a large Kinder Surprise worked perfect for the lid, and I lucked out finding a gumball mixture in all the right colors to fill it with.

Between the treat bags was a “Happy Birthday” banner I picked up at Michael’s and dressed up with a few My Little Pony stickers.

Party Food

The party menu included sandwiches and a selection of easy finger foods.  As with all my parties, I had fun selecting and naming the foods to match the theme

I came up with a menu item for each of the Mane 6 Pony’s.  The most time consuming menu item by far was the Rainbow Jello inspired by Rainbow Dash.  To make it, I followed these great directions from Must Have Mom.  It was an easy enough recipe to follow, but did require a good amount of time as you mix up each separate layer and wait for them to set.

For Applejack’s Garden Snacks, I set out a small selection of fresh vegetables in cute berry baskets.  The inspiration for Rarity came from her unicorn horn and were an easy snack to pull off using Bugle’s in paper cupcake liners.

I struggled to come up with a food item for Twilight Sparkle until I came across these adorable wands at Party City and decided they’d make the perfect skewers for fruit wands.  I took the easy way out and just picked up a tray of pre-cut fruit from Costco that I put onto the wands.

I usually do pigs in a blanket for my parties so I was delighted to come across the idea to transform them into butterflies by cutting out Pilsbury Crescents with a cookie cutter and using the sausage to the middle as the body of the butterfly.  These made the perfect snack inspired by Fluttershy’s cutie mark.

Speaking of cutie marks, I also made these pretty little sugar cookies and labelled them as Cutie Cookies in honor of the Cutie Mark Crusaders.  They were frosted with a yummy pink lemonade buttercream and topped off with colorful candy pearls.

Finally, Pinkie Pie was the inspiration for the punch.  For my Pinkie Punch, I simply mixed a carton of Watermelon Juice with a bottle of sparkling lemonade and finished it off with some frozen sliced strawberries and ice.  The punch was served alongside small bottles of water I prettied up with some rainbow printed tape.

Cake

As my kids get older, I like to involve them more in the party planning process.  I wasn’t sure what direction to go with the cake so my daughter and I did a quick search on Pinterest and she quickly decided her Pony party needed a rainbow cake.

I didn’t want to overload the entire cake with food coloring so I decided to stick with basic confetti cake (from a box) and brought the rainbow colors in through the icing.  For the bottom layer I piped on ruffles in alternating colors and the top white layer was dotted with colorful sixlets.  Between the layers, I did rings of the rainbow icing colors to create a rainbow effect when the cake was cut.  The topper was a print-out of the same Pony image I used on the invitation.

Party Activities

The party was held at our home so I wanted to come up with a couple easy activities to keep the kids entertained.  I would have loved to have ordered each guest a My Little Pony Decorate Your Own Pony from Hasbro, but the exchange rate and shipping costs just didn’t make it a feasible option.

Instead, I was excited to find these 3D cardboard Pop-Outz at Dollarama.  They were a similar concept to those mentioned above, but a whole heck of a lot easier on my party budget at 2 for $1.50.  The kids all had a great time coloring them and they didn’t know what they might be missing out on.

My other party activity was for the kids to create their own pony bead necklaces and bracelets.  I do a lot of my party shopping through Openaparty.com and was excited to find this Mega Pony Beading Kit that came with a wide selection of beads and the easy to use plastic necklaces and bracelets.  These worked perfect for the 3-6 year olds at the party to thread their own beads onto and I was excited to see them all practicing spelling out their names with the extra alphabet beads I picked up at Michael’s.

Favors

I started planning this party several months ago – thankfully my children are very good about picking and sticking to a party theme.  I saw these cat ear headbands at Dollar Tree just after Christmas and thought they’d make great party favors if I were ever to throw a cat party.  After leaving the store, I realized they didn’t HAVE to be cat ears and promptly went and cleared a couple stores out of their remaining headbands in anticipation of using them as Pony ears.

To display the headbands, I repurposed a round cardboard container lemonade powder had come in.  The lid and bottom got spray painted pink and I covered the main body of it in some My little Pony printed giftwrap.  To finish off the stand, I glued the cylinder onto a couple pink votive candle holders and pasted on a print-out of Pinkie Pie’s face and hair onto both ends.  It looked great lined up with the rainbow of headbands and the pony face really helped highlight that they were supposed to be Pony Ears.

The Birthday girl also requested  a “poon-not-ta” (piñata) so I was happy to find this Pinkie Pie version at Party City and Walmart.  I know she would have preferred it be one of the other Pony’s, but there are only so many DIY projects this momma is willing to take on for one party – especially when things are already done and ready to purchase.

The piñata candy was eagerly collected by all the kids and I handed out the personalized treat bags for them to put all their party treasures in.

The party wrapped up singing the birthday girl “Happy Birthday” and everyone enjoying a slice of the delicious rainbow birthday cake.  It was a great day and I was so happy the rain in the forecast held off so the kids could all enjoy playing in the backyard.  My little girl was so sweet repeatedly telling me “thank you for my Pony party momma!” and I know she was a very happy birthday girl that day surrounded by family and friends and spoiled with gifts.