My Little Pony Friendship is Magic Party

Have you seen the new My Little Pony cartoons?  They're so much less annoying than the 80's version!  My girls have recently gotten into My Little Pony Friendship is Magic.  They found videos online and now we have a couple of DVDs as well.   My youngest daughter chose My Little Pony as the theme for her fifth birthday party.  The neat thing about the new version is that it is an entertaining show for girls and boys.  I wasn't sure if everyone would be familiar with the show, but most of the kids were.

Every party starts with some research- I talked with my resident experts about the new MLP.  Who are the ponies?  What are their personalities and what they do?  I watched some MLPFIM with the girls.  I tried looking up ideas on the internet but there is not too much is out there yet.

Party Food- I decided to serve lunch.  We had a tray with apple slices and carrot sticks (because ponies like carrots and apples!)  I did make your own mini pizzas, not really pony related, but fun nonetheless.  I decided to roll out pizza dough, cut it into circles with a biscuit cutter, and partially bake them in advance.  They got pretty puffy so we ended up slicing them in half. I let the kids add whatever toppings and then we baked them until the cheese was all melted.  They turned out so good!  I will definitely do pizzas like this again in the future.  I set up a topping bar on our kitchen island.  I covered the island with brown paper (we got a huge roll of it from Home Depot, great for making birthday banners and other fun).

Only photo we got of the pizza
topping bar, me getting out
bacon to chop up

I wrote on the paper what all the toppings were (thanks Better Homes and Gardens).  We had cheese, mini pepperoni, mushrooms, bacon, and green peppers.  I used parchment paper over the pans so we could write names next to the pizzas to keep track of whose they were.







Instead of birthday cake we had "Pinky Pies"  mini pies made with vanilla pudding dyed pink.  I used store bought mini graham cracker crusts.  After pizza time we recovered the island with new paper for the dessert toppings.  I let the kids top their pies with their choice of mini m&ms, mini chocolate chips, crushed oreos, sprinkles, and mini marshmallows.  The top choice by far seemed to be "all of the above."  I also had a can of whipped cream and a jar of cherries which I forgot to put out.  I don't think the kids missed out.

Decorations- I printed out color pictures of the ponies and their dragon friend Spike.  I found a free MLP font online, it's called "equestria."  I used that to make a happy birthday banner and to make signs for some of the different activities.  I also printed out some MLP coloring pages and had the girls color them.  Having your birthday 8 days after halloween makes it handy to buy cheap leftover halloween stuff to use for your party.  I bought two discounted bales of hay from the craft store to use for decoration.  One sat on the table under the apple and carrot tray.  The other served as a step ladder for "apple picking."  More on that in a bit.

The birthday girl got a pink apron,
everybody else got white or cream

Activities- I wanted to do something with cutie marks.  I had considered making t-shirts, but after deciding to do make your own pizza lunch, I thought decorating little aprons would be fun.  The kids started out by designing their own cutie mark on a child size apron.  I bought these at Michael's with a coupon.  Michael's was the only place I could find multi-packs of child sized aprons.  These were a little nicer than I was looking for, but I couldn't any cheaper ones in the time I had.  The kids used fabric markers I already had.  After the kids decorated their aprons, they could go make their pizza.

I can't believe this is the only picture we got of this!
You can see our wonky door next to sliding door combo.

The other activity that took most of my thought and budget was Spike's buried treasure.  I filled up a little kiddie pool with play sand (just happened to have some in the garage we've never done anything with) and then had the girls bury the "treasures" I picked up in the dollar section of the craft store.  This was a huge hit!  We had lots of plastic bracelets (including some very discounted glow in the dark bracelets from halloween), gold and silver bead necklaces, and plastic gems.  The other activities we did were Rainbow Dash's Rainbow Dash, Pin the tail on the Pony, and Earth Pony/Pegasus/Unicorn.  Rainbow Dash's Rainbow Dash was basically a relay race that I didn't fully think through.  I put some masking tape lines on the floor in the basement and let the kids race around.  They liked running around even despite the lack of clear goals in the game.  Pin the tail on the Pony is pretty self explanatory.  I found a picture of a Pinky Pie pin the tail on the pony board online and just printed it out over four sheets of paper.  I had the girls make tails out of construction paper.  Delegation!  Earth Pony/Pegasus/Unicorn was a game based on a game called fruit salad.  It was a little beyond some of the kids in our group.  The kids sat in a circle.  Each kid is assigned to be either an earth pony, a pegasus, or unicorn.  The person in the middle calls out one of those groups, two of those groups, or calls out "all the ponies" and the kids who've been called have to get up and find a new seat.  The person in the middle tries to take a seat and whoever is left without a seat is the new person in the middle.  This game has no real winner, but the 8-11 year old girls I work with at church really enjoy playing the game it's based off of.  We didn't end up playing for too long since some of the kids were having a hard time with it.  We also watched an episode of the show while waiting for the pizzas to be done.

An apple tree with multiple colored apples as
opposed to the "rainbow apple trees"

Take Home- In addition to the aprons, everyone got to take home a goody bag.  Right before everyone went home we had each kid "pick an apple" from Apple Jack's apple orchard.  I painted two trees on some of that brown paper roll and hung it up near the front door.    We put a little leftover halloween candy (a ring pop and some tootsie rolls) in a sandwich bag and then wrapped half a sheet of tissue paper around it, making it look like an apple.  I tied the tissue paper with a bit of green yarn.  I wasn't sure how we'd attach the apples to the tree, but my husband came up with the clever solution.  He stuck them up with pushpins.  I didn't mind putting 20 little holes in the wall.  You can't even see them unless you look hard, and I could fill them up (possibly just with paint) if I really wanted to.  Of course we had to help the kids take the apples down and make sure to collect all the push pins, but they each got to stand on the hay bale and choose their apple.

I think it turned out pretty well.  We had a pretty big group and I have to thank my husband for all he did, our baby for napping during the party :D and the parents who stayed and helped out with some of the activities.  We had a very happy birthday girl!