Planning a Cow Party

 Yes, that said Cow Party. Insert cow patty joke here. Get it out of your system.

Moving on...

I am horrible at planning parties. Of all the things I am awesome at, party planning is not one of them.

Frankly, I just don't get the point. Make your house (or venue of choice) look nothing the way it normally does, with all sorts of things for people to look at but God forbid they touch, with structured activities to herd people to and from, a time-schedule to keep, food that takes 5000 hours to prepare (and dirties 8 million dishes in the process) and only a tenth of a second to swallow. The preparation and cleanup required for "a good party" seems to overwhelm any possible enjoyment one could have from such a thing.

I like good food, I like good times, I like getting together with good people. Why add all that extra stress into it, when just being with the good people will make for the good times (regardless of whether the food was good, or even if there was food to begin with)?

Anyway, I've been thinking about Asher's 2nd birthday coming up (eep!) and it's really low-key, as my parties tend to be (even when I try really hard to make them over the top). But I am doing one crazy thing. His cake. I'm ordering cake balls (oh my goodness, I turn into a 12 year old boy every time I say that phrase) that look like cows.

I reconnected with an elementary school friend, Katie, on Facebook. We were on the same softball team and grew up around the corner from each other. She has a home based business you can check out here. This particular design got the ball rolling, if you will.

My son has a strange obsession with cows. Just touching the cow at the children's zoo a few weeks ago sent him over the moon. He still talks about it ("Asher touch cow zoo!"). So instead of ordering the barnyard animals, I ordered 2 dozen cow cake pops. A cow pasture of pops. A dairy farm of cake, if you will. Katie will be standing them up in a green foam "pasture" and it's up to me to set the rest of the scene (which may or may not actually happen. They might end up being free-range cows...)

I'm currently searching for cheap plastic toy fencing. I'm hoping the Dollar Store doesn't let me down! Also, I'm pretty much committed to having to create the barn backdrop myself, which should be fairly simple. I've found these 2D barn images and I could easily recreate one on poster board or foamcore.

To carry on with the cow theme, I'm going to be getting black and white balloons, and probably a white table covering (I actually looked for a cow print table cloth at a party supply store today. Basically every other animal print you can imagine was available. No cow. Poor little cow. The store did have a toddler-sized cowboy hat. I considered getting it and writing "birthday boy" on it. Then I decided it was a waste of $6.99).

I can't wait to see my little boy's face when he sees a table full of miniature cows at his party. Even more, I can't wait to see his reaction when he realizes he can eat the cow.

Photos, of course, will ensue.