Little House on the Prairie Party

As unbelievable as it seems, I now have a 7 year old! Last summer we read through the entire Little House book series, and she loved it. I think she really identified with the young Laura when it came to orneriness. This year for her birthday, she really liked the idea of having a Little House on the Prairie Party (or as she calls it, a Mary and Laura party).

I bought both of the girls bonnets to wear, but neither kept them on the whole party. They also chose dresses that were not authentic looking at all, but what can you do, they wore what they liked. I imagine Laura may have liked to wear something different too!

For her invites, I made up some cute cards with what looked like a pinwheel, quilt square on them. The pattern I used for the quilt square can be found at Stars and Stamps. She couldn't decide on a color, so we made everyone of them different!

There wouldn't have been a lot of decorations in Laura's time, so we chose to keep things simple. No balloons or streamers. We used a red check tablecloth, some fake sunflowers, and a few fake leeches (who doesn't remember that part of the series). I was surprised at how well the leeches went over with the kids. Eli loved them and a few of us had leech cups by sandwiching them between 2 clear cups.

Just like in Laura's time the kids had to help with the meal. Their part was to make the butter! My girls had done it before (Kid-Made Butter), but it was an amazing transformation for some of the other kids and for my little sister.

Once we had butter we could eat! We tried to keep to foods mentioned in the books or that we knew they would have had around that time, so we had fried chicken, green beans, cornbread (with our home made butter), and watermelon. Beverage options included tea, lemonade, and water.

And instead of cake, Bria wanted pie! That fit and was easy to do a little ahead of time. Plus I could rope grandparents into bringing some too. So we had a nice selection of cherry, blackberry, peach, gooseberry, strawberry, and even a vinegar pie like Ma made in the books. I found the vinegar pie recipe at Money Saving Mom, and it wasn't my favorite, but if I changed the extract in it a little it could definitely be better!

Of course, we had gifts that we not traditional to the books, but I don't think she minded. She did get her very own copy of the first 5 books of the Little House series along with tons of toy horses. She was so excited about the horses!

After all the food and the gifts they headed outside to play Annie Over. Not mentioned in the book, but a game Bria loves playing that at least dates back to the early 1900's. If you aren't familiar with it, you have a group of players stand on each side of the house. One throws the ball over the house and yells "Annie Over!" If the ball is caught before it bounces twice the catching team tries to sneak around the house and tag as many of the other players as possible to increase their team. You keep playing until everyone is on one team. It wore them all out (the older players before the younger), but they had fun, and the audience had fun as well!

Before everyone headed home, we let them each choose a simple, Little House themed favor. They each had a little metal pail with an orange, a stick of old fashioned candy, and a shiny penny! I know Bria had to explain the favors to some of the guests! Then I was surprised when my nieces also wanted to take home a leech (I told you they went over well)!