How to rock a My Little Pony Party.

So when I told Natallie that for her 4th birthday she could have a party but we would keep it low-key  Simon rolled his eyes at me. OK so I guess Simon was right, I never do anything low-key. But at least Natallie had chosen the My Little Pony theme almost right after her 3rd birthday so I had almost 365 days to find pony paraphernalia which was much less stressful than scouring every dollar store in the Lower Mainland last year for Frozen things and snowflakes stickers in July. But I guess most sane individuals don't spend a year brainstorming ideas for their daughter's birthday parties so here goes my list of how to rock a My Little Pony Party that any mom can do in a couple of weeks.

1. Get in touch with your Pintresty side and DIY all the party decorations. Yes I know you can order all the party decorations from those online websites but half the fun (at least for me!) is making it all yourself. I used to spend hours scrapbooking and now I just stay up late cutting pony posters and deciding whether or not to attempt and paper mache Pinkie Pie for a pinata (the consensus was no). Plus the kids even helped with painting the posters and making home-made pinkilicious playdoh.

the kids helped me paint and decorate this poster

Rainbow Dash fruit platter

welcome to Ponyville

super easy DIY party signs

2. Plan Pony-themed activities for the kids to do. I got these great DIY My Little Pony kits from Target when they were closing which made for a great activity. The girls liked picking a mane and tail and decorating it with cutie marks.

Be creative and make your own pony

I also bought crowns from the craft store and we made "Twilight Sparkle" crowns.  What little girl doesn't like sparkly crowns and pony stickers?

dancing with their crowns

And of course the best part was face painting but because I lack artistic ability to draw on wiggly girls that don't sit still, I made a 'menu' board of cutie marks that the girls could get and all of them were basic shapes that could be done in less than a minute (the average length of time a 3 year old can sit still for).

"Rainbow Dash" cutie marks were the popular choice

best part of doing 'cutie marks' is that any parent can draw them for their daughter

even Daddy can draw rainbows

Alexa with her "Fluttershy" cute mark

"Apple jack" cutie mark

"Twilight Sparkle" cutie mark

3. Be optimistic that a group of mostly 3 year olds will understand how to play organized party games. So maybe I was a bit overly optimistic about the girls being able to follow directions but at least it gave the parents a good laugh when no one understood the point of a relay race is to wait for the person in front to hand you the baton before you start running. It was a mad exodus to the other end of the yard but other than Noah getting trampled by a bunch of frenzied girls, all was good and with some parent prompting, they got the idea and the "Rainbow Dash Relay Race" was super fun.

the girls were supposed to tap "Rainbow Dash" with the baton and run back but they just stayed there and tapped the pictures back and forth while all the parents were yelling "COME BACK!!!! RUN BACK!!"

Eventually they got the hint to run back and pass the baton

Run Emily Run!

The next game was My Little Pony Memory Match. I made huge cards and the girls were supposed to flip 2 cards to see if they had a match. Simple enough right? No one remembered where the cards were and kept on turning over the same two cards. So with some parents "strongly encouraging" their children to turn over the right cards, the girls finally matched up all the ponies.

The last game was "Pin the Tail on Princess Celestia". Simon made a magnetic board with metal panels that he got from work and I made little tails with magnets.

In retrospect, I don't think I needed to even plan any organized games. The girls had a blast just going down the slide and running in circles!

3.  Kids are notorious for being picky eats so choose a simple DIY food. We decided to do make-it-yourself pizzas because it's easy and each kid can choose what to put on it.  Then everyone can make their pizza the way they like it like no tomato sauce or no cheese. Birthdays are great because their is always cake so the "first eat your food and then you can have cake!" usually works great.  I was spending enough time making all the decorations so I did not make the cake and when you have a birthday in July it's almost mandatory that you need a DQ birthday cake anyways. I just got My Little Pony figurines and put them on a rainbow ice cream cake and it was perfect! 

4. Understand that for young kids, giving presents is just as exciting as opening presents. Of course Natallie loved receiving presents from her best friends but it was fun watching how excited her friends were to give her the present they had chose or show her the card they painted or the picture they drew for her. Some friends were so excited they would unwrap the present for her. 

 My mom was equally as excited to give Natallie her big-girl bike. She scoured every Walmart and Toysrus in search of a Frozen bicycle but apparently all the stores were sold out so we creatively made our own custom Elsa bike. We found a regular bike in "Elsa blue" (that is a official color), took off the stock decals and put on our own Frozen decals. She loved it! 

5. Get a pinata that works. So the good part about having an indestructible pinata was that each girl got a chance to wack the living daylights out of the princess pony castle and nothing happened. I think after 5 minutes in, the pinata stick actually broke and the pinata was still taunting the girls fully intact with all the candy inside. After each girl had a chance to thoroughly work out any anger management issues, Simon just ripped the thing open! It was the type of pinata that you have to fill yourself so I instead of having a free for all grab for candy, I made little loot bags of candy with each girl's name on it so there would be no fighting. Yay for socialism at its finest.

the indestructible pony princess castle pinata

candy bags accessorized with a My Little Pony ring

6. Capture lots of smiles for lasting memories. 

Natallie says, "this is my baby prince!"

8. And lastly, explain to the poor little brother than Mommy is too exhausted from planning this party that in September he might just get a juicebox and a high 5.

And that's a wrap. Thanks for coming out!