This was my daughter's last year in elementary school. I had the opportunity to organize the last party/dance at her elementary school. The kids took a vote and chose a Hoedown Throwdown party for their celebartion. The party was held in the evening at the school gymnasium. We had a DJ, food, games and photos. We served picnic type foods such as hot dogs, lemonade, cheese & crackers, snack mix made from corn chex cereal, m&m's, pretzels, and giant red, white & blue fire cracker/rocket popsicles for dessert. Since we didn't have a lot of room for games we decided on small old fashion carnival type games such as bean bag toss, horseshoes (plastic horseshoes of course), etc.
The Hoedown Throwdown Party Entrance....
The entrance to the school was decorated with a variety of western themed decorations. Balloons, cowboy scarecrows, painted props, decorated wooden pitch forks, steer heads and colorful bandandas hung on cotton clotheslines with wooden clothespins. Tan's Club is a great place to purchase bandanas at a great price and quick delivery.Pitch forks ... bought these for $.50 each from AC Moore and decorated them with red, white and blue ribbons and raffia ...
I made HoBo Bags for Goodie Bags/Take Home Treats ... I filled a plastic school mugs with raffia, granola bars, jolly rancher candies, Hershey kisses, and blow pops. Then wrapped each mug in a bandana with a huge pixie stick as a handle. I decorated good luck wooden horseshoes with sharpie paint pens and tied those onto the outside with raffia....
We made a Candy/Sweet Shop from an old refrigerator box... (here I am in the sweet shop). The shop was painted red and white, decorated with raffia and Martha Stewart bandana card stock (I love this paper!)
Here are a few of the Games (bean bag toss, ring toss, horeshoes, etc.). I didn't get many photos of the games.
I made a variety of paper bunting/banners that were hung throughout the school entrance, the gymnasium (where the party was held), food tables, and main lobby (where we had individual photos taken by a photographer). The bunting/banners were made from, clipart, a wild west font, cardstock and ribbon.
To make each letter used in the bunting/banner you can use Microsoft Word. Download the Wild West USA font at dafont.com and install the fonts (directions are given at dafont.com). Once you have the font installed you can create a page fore each letter needed (example "H" on page 1, "O" on page 2, etc.). Next download the rope and paper clipart at The FunDraw.com Clipart website. Copy and paste the clipart onto each page. You will need to size and center the letter and clipart to your liking. Print each letter onto whatever cardstock you like. Trim as needed. I put slits at the top left and top right side of each letter and then wove coordinating ribbon to make each sign (Candy, Photos, Games, Refreshments, Hoedown, Throwdown, etc.). Be creative, make any western type sign you can think of.
These banners were printed on Kraft style cardstock ...
And these banners were printed on Red, Yellow, Blue cardstock. 
Photo Table bunting/banner (which at the end of the night it turned into our take home goodie bag table)
Refreshment Table (not quite put together yet, but the only photo I have)
Games...
For a quick, inexpensive table decorations, I filled glass coke bottles with decorative sand and silk sunflowers.
I made Western Style Poster Board Wall Decorations by enlarging and printing off western style clipart (boots, cowboy hats, sheriff badges, and horse shoes) using Microsoft Word. I then traced the print outs on to poster board, cut them out and then used glue & glitter to decorate each. This was actually one of the funnest things I did .. who doesn't like glitter & glue (lol.......I did this outside on the driveway...I think there's still glitter floating around the neighborhood). It took this pictures real quick before leaving to go home and get changed. I had turned the lights out so the pictures aren't great.
You can't have a child's party without going to Oriental Trading for some goodies! We purchased Straw Western Hats for each of the kids fromthere .. the price was good and I can't complain about the quality of the hats...
Plastic saloon doors and doorway fringe were also purchased from Oriental Trading ..
Some of the kids painted a poster for the entrance to the party ... used dollar store craft paper...
During the last few weeks of school I went in during lunch to take photos of each student. One of the mom's so kindly offered to make a collage .. it came out really cute. We saved so we can display it when they are seniors in high school.
I made Wanted Posters of each of the 5th grade teachers and the principal. I used Poster Forge to make the Wanted Posters. Here's a picture of some of the posters...
I was a ton of work but it was worth it for my beautiful daughter ...
