My Little Pony Party : Rainbows Everywhere

My daughter is a performer. She sings, dances, and entertains us constantly.  When she found the My Little Pony Equestria Girls, it was a match made in heaven. The songs and the bright colors drew her in to the world of My Little Pony, and our car rides to school have never been the same (the soundtrack is almost always on repeat).

I started planning her 4th birthday party with a My Little Pony theme on Pinterest. There is a lot of inspiration out there, and my board quickly filled up. I took a random day off work and attacked JoAnne’s to get all of my supplies.  There are a few staple decorations that I have at almost all of her parties:

1. Fabric for a tablecloth – Super easy way to dress up your table
2. Fresh Flowers
   1. A unique vase and flowers to mimic your color scheme can bring a cool element to your table
3. Birthday Banner
   1. I usually go for scrapbook paper for the letters and ribbon to tie the letters together
4. “Number”
   1. I’m a big fan of the large cardboard numbers and letters you can buy. I have painted them, wrapped in twine, and bedazzled before.

Party Decorations : How-To

Tablecloth

I found there were actually a lot of fabric options for my tablecloth this time.  I ended up going with the Hot Air Balloon fabric since it gave me a lot of good color options for matching other decorations and lots of different ponies.

Fresh Flowers

One way to set your flowers apart is with a really unique vase. I found mercury mason jars in a pale pink and silver that looked great with the tablecloth and fit my sparkly/shiny pony party theme.  For fresh flowers, I use Publix a lot!  They had a few Rainbow bouquets along with hydrangeas that allowed me to create two different looks : One for the Rainbow Table and one for my dining room table.

Birthday Banner

This was by far one of the easier banners I have made. I found a set of card stock in both rainbow sparkle and plain paper at JoAnne’s Fabric.  At 6″ squares, it was the perfect size for a banner.  A trick I came up with a long time ago to make banners easier :

1. Type up your birthday message in Microsoft Word until each letter is on a single page.
2.  Highlight all of your letters and Select “Text Effects”
3. Choose a light gray outline
4. Change the font color to white
5. Place your paper in the printer in the color order you want.  For me, I usually plan my pattern before hand.
6. Print your letters and use the light grey outline as a guide for cutting out your letters perfectly!
   

   Use the Text Effects option in Microsoft Word to create a light grey border on your banner letters for an easy guide to cutting perfect letters!

I printed the letters onto the plain, rainbow paper and used fun scissors to cut decorative borders on the sparkle paper. I kept to a square shape to make it easy to create the banner.  Once the letters were cut, we glued them to the sparkle paper.  A whole punch on each side, and some sparkle tulle tied the whole thing together.  I’d also picked up some fun My Little Pony Stickers that we used for an accent.

Number Time

JoAnne’s, or other craft stores, always have great cardboard or wooden letters and numbers.  I’ve used these for multiple birthday parties to either paint or decorate. This year, we picked up a “4” and painted it a pretty Rainbow Dash blue.

Balloons

Amazon is my go-to for cute, cheap balloons. You almost always save on buying the balloons through Amazon and then having them filled at a store. You also get access to a lot more variety.  In this case, Publix filled my My Little Pony balloons for $1.00 each.

My Little Pony Birthday Table Items

I searched my typical places for My Little Pony themed table items and found the cheapest prices at Oriental Trading.  I also found a cute idea on Pinterest to use themed-cups as your give-away at the party.  The napkins, plates, and cups all cost less than $30 total.

The Food! (My favorite part…)

I inevitably go over-board on the food. I can’t resist a themed-snack! The menu for this party:

1. Pinkie Pie’s Cake
2. Twilight Sparkle’s Magic Wands – Pretzel Sticks
3. Fluttershy’s Pasta Salad
4. Rainbow Dash’s Fruit Tray
5. Apple Jack’s Mac N’ Cheese
6. Banana Pudding
7. Smoked Chicken and Smoked Sausage

Pinkie Pie’s Cake

While cupcakes are my staple, my daughter asked for a big cake this year.  Since I was already departing from my norm, I decided to go all the way and make a lemon cake with a lemon icing instead of the typical butter-cream and sugar overload that I’m known for.  I didn’t, however, depart from my reference of all things delicious. I used http://mybakingaddition.com again for the cake and icing recipe. It was delicious, and also did an amazing job taking the different colored dyes for my Rainbow Cake.

The directions look really long, but this was a very easy cake to make : Dorie Greenspan’s Perfect Party Cake.  Once made, I separated the batter into 6 separate bowls and used Wilton’s Gel Icing Colors in Red, Orange, Lemon Yellow, Kelly Green, Royal Blue, and Violet.  I poured all of the red batter into the middle of a round 9″ pan, and added each color in rainbow-order directly into the middle of the previous batter.

I followed a similar path with the icing, making the meringue based icing from Dorie Greenspan’s Perfect Party Cake.  It wasn’t as sweet as my usual but had a nice, light lemon flavor.  I used the star tip from my Best-Ever Cupcake Icing Kit to make concentric rainbow circles in small stars. It was a pretty easy icing strategy, but turned out amazing!

Twilight Sparkle’s Magic Wands

Candy-coated pretzel sticks!  This is another easy treat to make and one the kids can participate in.  I got a variety of candy-coating and sprinkles in rainbow colors from Hobby Lobby.  We used white candy coating for the base for all of the pretzels. I covered them, then passed them off to the kids for sprinkles.  After the sprinkles were finished, we melted an entire rainbow of candy coating and piped stripes and other designs.

Fluttershy’s Pasta Salad

This was a true Pinterest win!  I found inspiration for Fluttershy’s pasta salad showing pasta dyed to match Fluttershy.  This year, I used the Wilton’s Gel Dye for the cake, icing, and also the pasta. The process I followed:

• Boil a pound of bow-tie pasta
• Split the pasta between 3 large ziplock bags
• Add a small amount of Wilton’s Gel Dye to each bag
  • I used Lemon Yellow, Violet, and Pink separatelyI
• Shake each bag vigorously and let sit for about 5 minutes
  • Most of the color should be absorbed
• Pour each bag into a colander and rinse in cold-water until the water runs clear
  • Ironically, the yellow color took the longest to run clear. The violet and pink were fairly quick.

After I dyed the pasta, I used this greek salad recipe to finish off the pasta. It turned out amazing and is my new go-to!

Rainbow Dash’s Fruit Tray

I have served a fruit tray at so many parties, and I was focused on filling up the rainbow with this one. I used:

• Gala Apples
• Strawberries
• Halo Tangerines
• Pineapple
• Green Grapes
• Purple Grapes

I’ve also used blueberries or blackberries for my “blue and purple” before as well. I also have a great fruit dip recipe that gives a sweet orange flavor : Dreamsicle Fruit Dip.

Apple Jack’s Mac N’ Cheese

My grandmother made the best Mac N’ Cheese and passed her recipe down to us.  We use the same base recipe, but switch up the cheese and pasta types for unique tastes. Apple Jack is a country girl, and every country girl loves Mac N’ Cheese!  For the party, we wanted a rich, cheesy side dish.

• Boil 1 pound penne pasta
• Shred 8 oz each of white cheddar, sharp yellow cheddar, and smoked gouda
• Put a layer of cheese on the bottom of a 9×13 glass pan (about 1/3 of total cheese)
• Add another 1/3 of the cheese to the pasta and mix together
• Add two eggs and continue mixing
• Pour the cheese/pasta/egg mixture into the pan
• Add remaining cheese to the top of the mixture
• Pour whole milk until you see it about 1/2 up the pan
• Bake at 350 F until the milk is boiling and mostly absorbed.

Banana Pudding

After introducing this banana pudding to my family, there isn’t a party that goes by when they don’t request it.  The key to this pudding are the cookies and the whipped cream. Nilla wafers can’t hold a candle to these chess cookies.  I make whipped cream from scratch for every recipe, and it really does make a difference.  It is also better if you make it the night before so it had time to sit.

The recipe is pretty self-explanatory, but my substitute is for the fresh whipped cream.  To make:

• Pour 12 oz of heavy whipping cream into a medium sized bowl
• Add 6 spoonfuls of sugar
• Beat with an electric mixer, starting on low speed. Increase to medium speed as the cream thickens.
• Add an additional spoonful of sugar as necessary until you have thick whipped cream

Smoked Chicken and Sausage

I don’t have a great recipe here, just a great caterer!  With all of the side dishes occupying my time, I purchased our main course.  There is a great restaurant in Fairview, TN called Oliver’s Kitchen that always comes through for us at a very reasonable price. My kids loved their smoked sausage.

Putting it all together

Putting all of the decorations and food together, we ended up with a pretty successful My Little Pony Birthday Party!

My little performer wanted a guitar for her birthday, and we were able to make that work too. We’ve been serenaded with many Equestria Girls and My Little Pony songs already!