Western Theme Daddy Daughter Date

Guess who recently got called to be an Activity Day leader and happily accepted? Yes, I was thrilled to join the Activity Day team for my new ward. During the months of August, September, and October, I helped planned and prepared for the annual daddy daughter date event.  I spent many hours designing paper decorations for picks, game signs, game map, watering hole sign, food cards, menu, etc.  I also designed the invitations, a fun activity place mat, and subway art.  Thankfully, we planned activities for the girls to help us out with cutting, assembling, coloring the backdrop, and putting other decorations together. On the day of the Hoedown, I was in charge of setting up the decorations, food prep, and was the photographer during the evening.  Since I had no cowgirl attire, I went shopping for some boots, hat, jeans, shirt, and belt. As for my belt buckle, I was honored to wear my great grandmother Ruby Coleman's belt buckle that was passed down to me.  It was fun to watch my husband and daughter interact with each other all evening! 

The Invitation
 I designed this invite using digital scrap book supplies, buttons, red thread, needle, glue sticks, and 3d foam adhesive stickers. The girls assembled the invite, stitched together the pockets, and placed the invite inside the pocket. 

Credits: I used The Happy Trails kit and other misc supplies by Shabby Princess and the wood and denim supplies are by Gina Cabrera. For the fonts, I used Hoedown, IFC Los Banitos, Three Dates One Night, Duality, Bergamot Ornaments, and WM Western1. 

The Decorations
Here are some examples of the decorations: food cards, picks, the invites, the DIY cow print cups the girls cut out from their own design using sticky black vinyl, the paper flowers wrapped around the mason jars, lots of raffia tied on things, rope, bandannas, denim and checkered table cloths. The Templates  Credits are the following: Sheriff Badge, Cowboy Hat, Boot Template, Napkin Template, Wagon Wheel, and Horse Shoe.
Another amazingly creative talented activity leader brought a fence to display other decorations (cow boy hats, rope, signs, boots, etc), she designed the vintage posters, made some picks, wanted posters, name cards, square hay bales center pieces, etc. She also helped the girls hammer a design in a soup can then spray painted them red, which we placed a light in the can, there were mustache and lip cutouts pulled through straws, and she designed the awesome napkin rings.

My Cowboy Subway Art: I downloaded several fonts from all over the internet. I found most of them off Pinterest, which had direct links!

The Photo Booth and Props: First, I took pictures of them while country music was playing in the background. As for the backdrop, cowboy/cowgirl hats, lips, mustaches, signs, sheriff badge, cowboy lingo, and robber eye mask were made by the other talented leader!  She also drew the backdrop which the girls colored with chalk for the photo shoot. I made the shooting booth sign red taped on the table.

The Menu: We tried to keep it simple...  We made BBQ Pulled Pork, bought Rolls, Baked Potatoes, Potato Fixin's, Salad Ranch, Broccoli and Cheese, water, and lemonade. For dessert: Root Beer floats and Smoky S'more Pops. The girls and their Dads enjoyed the cowboy table place mat games!  After they all ate their grub, we had somebody from our ward read a cowboy poem and a "real cowboy" did a demonstration on how to saddle up a horse, etc.

The Games:  Next, they played a few games. We split them in four groups. These are the game signs that I designed, which were hung on the doors. We had wheel barrow races, three legged races around a fake fire, potato sack races with a twist they had to dress up in random cowboy gear, pin the tail on the donkey, and they learned a western line dance.  Lastly, we had them gather together in the gym and do the country line dance that they learned and served root beer floats.  We sent the girls home with their wanted poster, name cards, etc. 

Yee-haw, what a rootin' tootin' night! It was a huge success because of the team work of the incredible activity leaders as well as other volunteers from our ward who helped us!