Plan a barnyard bash with our Farm Party Ideas! Read on for general party planning tips as well as great hoedown decorating ideas, food, game, and activity suggestions.

• Hand sanitizer and wipes, if children will be touching animals.
• Bales of hay for decoration and extra seating.
• Costume items such as straw cowboy hats and bandanas for each guest.
• Disposable Cameras.

• Cut a barn from red cardstock, with double doors in the middle. Then make a small cut between the doors so they open, and attach the barn to another page. Print the party details on the page underneath, so they are revealed when the barn doors are opened. Draw white trim on the barn doors with a correction fluid pen, and add farm animal stickers to create the look of a barnyard.
• Or use red cardstock with both sides folded to the center, and trim the top into a curve. This creates a three-panel card resembling a barn. Guests will open the barn doors to find the party details printed inside. Place an animal sticker on the inside of each door.
• Invite the guests to wear overalls or denim pants.
• Use creative wording for your invitation, and your guests will be excited before the big day arrives! Consider using our example, or write your own: You're invited to a Barnyard Bash!
  Join "Old Mc(your child’s name)" on his farm for lots of fun and games.
  Be sure to come in your barnyard clothes!
  You’ll have a Farm-tastic time!
  RSVP with a yay or a neigh! (your phone number)
• Seal the envelopes with farm stickers.
• For a special touch, let us print personalized invitations for you! We’ll include your child’s name and all the party details with a background design that complements your chosen farm party theme. You can also take a look at the blank invitations we offer. These are quick to fill in and mail, which is perfect when you want to get your invitations out quickly. Check out all of our farm party invitations.

• Cover your tables with red-checkered tablecloths, and use small terra cotta plant pots lined with a bandana to hold the cutlery.
• Roll more bandanas to use as napkins, and tie the middle with a piece of twine.
• If your child has a toy red barn, use it as the table centerpiece.
• If they're available, decorate with cornstalks or bales of hay. Use bales of hay for extra seating at an outdoor party.
• Make a banner that says “Welcome to the (your last name) Barnyard” and hang it near the party entrance. See our selection of Farm Banners and let us do the work for you!
• Ask your guests to dress in jeans or overalls, plaid shirts, and other "farm gear." Tie red bandanas around their necks as they arrive.
• Draw large pigs, sheep, and cows onto poster board, and attach to wooden stakes. Press the stakes into the ground, or attach them to the walls around the party space.
• Set out a little red wagon (or several if you can borrow some from friends) and fill it with hay. Ask a parent or two to pull the children around on "hay rides."
• Stuff an old pair of overalls or jeans and a flannel shirt with newspaper. Tie off the ends of the legs and shirt sleeves with twine or rope. Set a hat down over the collar to make a scarecrow. You can stand him in the front yard by placing a shovel firmly in the ground and running the handle through the back of the pants and shirt.
• Make a barn from a large cardboard box by painting it red and putting stuffed animals inside. If you have stick ponies or a rocking horse, set them outside the barn. This may become a popular play area during the party, especially for the younger guests.
• Create a Pig Pen using pink balloons. Draw faces for the pigs using a black marker, and attach pink curly ribbon for the tails. Place the balloon pigs inside a playpen and let your guests play freely with them during the party.
• Hire a small petting zoo or pony ride to come to the party. Or create your own petting zoo by asking friends and neighbors to bring their pets to the party. If you prefer not to deal with live animals, you can create a pretend petting zoo using a variety of stuffed animals.
• Fill a toddler pool with a small amount of water and lots of rubber ducks to create a pond. Be sure to place your pond where it can be supervised at all times, to avoid any accidents.
• Balloons always say “Party” to children! Tie groups of helium balloons together and anchor them in place with balloon weights. For greater impact, combine animal shaped balloons with colorful latex balloons. Tie a balloon to the back of each chair, and tie a group of five balloons to the birthday child’s chair!
• Consider a pull-string piñata if you would rather not have small children swinging a bat. We offer a selection of traditional and pull-string piñatas, but any traditional piñata can be converted to a pull-string using our easy instructions.
• Ask an older child or adult to dress as a farmer and make balloon animals for the children. Use our easy Balloon Animals Kit which includes an instruction book, balloons, and balloon inflator. There’s no need to master the entire book! One or two basic shapes will delight young children.


• Set up a pretend milking station using a saw horse, rubber surgeon's glove, string, a low stool, water, and a bucket. Fill the glove with water and tie off the top. Hang it underneath the saw horse using the string. Place the bucket beneath the saw horse and the stool alongside it.
  Use a pin to prick the tip of each "udder" and let the children practice squirting water into the bucket while sitting on the stool.


• Make individual animal headbands for your guests using wide construction paper strips. (It may be necessary to staple two lengths together unless you have access to long sheets of construction paper.) To decorate the strips, cut out different-colored ears and combs, glue them onto the strips, then draw on patterns or glue on faux fur from a craft store. For instance, you could cut out and attach a red "comb" to create a rooster, attach brown faux fur or frayed brown construction paper to create a horse or donkey, and white ears with black magic-marker spots for a cow. Be creative!
• Consider using one of our Farm Party Boxes, which come filled with barnyard-themed plates, napkins, cups, a table cover, streamers, balloons, and more.
• Or see our Farm Party Decorations for more quick and easy decorating choices!

• Serve the party food in wicker baskets and clean metal buckets.
• Barbeque style food is a good fit with this party theme. Try hamburgers, chicken drumsticks, and hot dogs.
• Or plan a picnic lunch and serve the food on metal pie plates. Include sandwiches, watermelon slices, potato salad, and chips.
• Take hotdogs to the farm by turning them into Pigs in a Blanket. Simply bake hotdogs in crescent roll dough (found in tubes in the refrigerator section of your local grocery store).
• Serve thin french fries and call them "Straw".
• Turn your vegetable platter into a Vegetable Patch by arranging the cut vegetables in little rows. Add a small metal pail of dip in the corner.
• Make a bucket of “chicken feed” for the children by combining cereal snack mix with candy corn.
• Prepare chocolate pudding in clear plastic cups, and place a toy pig on top. Call it Pigs Stuck in the Mud, and sprinkle crushed chocolate cookies around the pig as dirt.
• Serve candy apples.
• Fill a large metal tub with ice to chill the drinks. Offer small water bottles, milk jugs, or juice pouches.
• Serve chocolate milk drinks and call them "Brown Cows." If desired, give your cows "spots" by throwing a few mini-marshmallows into each glass.
• Create a lollipop flower garden using sheets of colored foam from the craft store, and wrapped lollipops. Cut flower shapes out of the foam and poke a hole through the middle. Slide the foam flower onto the lollipop stick to create a flower, and add a green leaf, if desired. Push all the lollipops into the ground and label the area (your child’s name)’s Flower Patch. Let the children pick and eat the flowers.
• Serve drinks with shaped silly straws.
• Create a Barnyard Birthday Cake that will delight your child! Here are three different ideas for decorating a cake:
  
  1. Make a pink Pig Cake from a round two-layer cake using our decorating instructions.
  2. Bake or purchase a 9”x13” cake and a loaf shaped cake, in any flavor. Cut a barn shape out of the 9”x13” cake and place on a cake plate with the loaf cake next to it as the silo. Trim the top end of the silo into a curve. Cover both cakes in red frosting, with white trim on the barn and silo. Decorate the barn using rectangle crackers for the doors, yellow coconut as hay, and a square wheat cracker as the door in the hayloft. Place some crispy rice cereal squares next to the barn as hay bales, along with plastic farm animals to complete the scene!
  3. Another option is to use a 9”x13” cake to create just the barnyard, and place your child’s toy barn on the table right behind the cake. Frost the cake with green icing, and sprinkle crushed graham crackers in one area for a corral. Use small pretzel twists pressed into the icing to make a fence around the corral, and place plastic animals inside. Then add crushed chocolate cookie crumbs in another corner of the cake to create a dirt pile, and place a toy pig in the middle.
• Or you can make each child their own cupcake with green frosting, and add a plastic farm animal on top.


• Serve Mud Puddles made from brownies cut into circles and topped with hot fudge "mud." If you want to go all out, add a marzipan cow or pig to each (found at specialty and gourmet stores).
• Serve Jell-O during a "Pig-Out Contest." Children must hold their hands behind their backs and eat cubes of Jell-O from "troughs" (i.e. small bowls). This activity might require putting on paper napkin bibs!
• Make animal cookies using animal-shaped cookie cutters and our Animal Sugar Cookies recipe, or use ready-made cookie dough from the grocery store.