My Little Pony birthday party

Excuse me while I go vaguely Pinteresty on you now for a few minutes. (But not very high-class Pinteresty. More underachiever Pinteresty.)

When I was thinking about Mabel's upcoming fifth birthday party a few weeks ago, it struck me that My Little Pony would be an excellent theme, but when I searched for some help online there wasn't much out there. So I figured I'd fill the gap in the market with a couple of half-assed suggestions. (That's a pun. Ass/donkey/pony. See? You're welcome.)

It was only very loosely MLP-themed, as parties go, but five-year-olds - or three or seven or whatever you've got - they don't need every little thing to match. Even if most of them didn't twig that there was a theme, as such, it doesn't matter, really. The birthday girl knew what was going on, and everyone had fun. It just gave us something to pull things together with.

I bought a cheap MLP colouring book at Target and ripped pages out so that everyone could do some colouring as they arrived. It's nice to have something non-interactive to help the children warm up to each other and their surroundings, especially if they don't all know each other already (mine did, as it happened). Alternatively, you could probably print some colouring pages from the internet.

The main event (mane! hah!) was what we I liked to call Thunderbolts Academy, which, as any good MLP viewer knows, was where Rainbow Dash went to learn to be a super-fast flyer - a sort of Top Gun for ponies. I modeled this activity on the Jedi Training Course we'd done for Dash's Star Wars parties: a simple obstacle course where the kids had a couple of things to jump over and walk along and crawl under in order to receive their prize: wings! Because now they're pegasus ponies!

I ordered fairy wings in various colours (but mostly pink, to be honest) from HaloHeaven. At $2 each, they're great value, and made a much nicer take-home gift than a goodie bag full of crap. (Because you all know how I feel about goodie bags.) I urge you to do this: there are few things cuter than a roomful of four- and five-year-olds unselfconsciously wearing wings.

One they'd got their wings, they played for a while before we had food and cake, and then we let them all outside to leap (like ponies) in a big pile of leaves that we'd raked up for just this purpose. (Obviously, good weather and an autumn birthday are vital to this step. We've been lucky in past years and usually manage to let everyone work off their sugar rush this way.) I didn't take any photos of the leaping in the leaves because I was viewing from inside, with a beer, and the other parents, most of whom elected to stay even though we'd said they could go. I take this as a compliment, though whether it's because they like the company, or the cake, or the beer, is not clear.

If you want some more structure, pin the tail on the pony would be an obvious game to play. Pony-shaped piñata, maybe? Or maybe whacking a pony with a stick is contrary to the theme; a dragon might be better.

My food was not pony-themed, because I bake what I like to bake for parties, and attempting a horse-shaped cake is way beyond me. Nobody complained about the rectangular chocolate cake (that didn't even have icing on the top), or the brown-butter Swiss meringue buttercream-frosted strawberry cupcakes, or my signature pigs in blankets - even if ponies don't eat pigs and they might be more thematically suited to a Peppa Pig party.

That's the lot. Send your little ponies home with their wings and a smile on their faces before the cake has quite worn off, close the door, and put the kettle on for a nice self-congratulatory cup of tea. You're done for another year.

New-obsessions week, day 4: My Little Pony

It's not new, and it's not mine, but it's certainly an obsession. I've put a limit on the daily television watching for the summer, and the kids are currently using all their allotted minutes on episodes of My Little Pony.

The great thing is that it's on YouTube, so they can watch it whenever suits us, like when I'm having a shower or trying to make dinner. The terrible thing is that they have to use my computer for that, so I can't do anything useful or important like blogging or checking out Facebook while they are quietly and harmoniously occupied.

(Which is why the TV is on right now and Mabel is watching unsanctioned Daniel Tiger. After a good start last week, I am currently failing at TV restriction.)

But as TV for kids goes, I'm pro the Ponies. It's not quite as educational as their other firm favourite, WildKratts, but it has a positive message - friendship really is magic, after all - and at least with ponies you don't have to worry about negative body image issues. None of the ponies are fat or thin, and though some are pegasi* and some are unicorns and some are just regular ponies, there is no ponyism. They do have slightly differing American accents (now I'm wondering if they dub them with UK accents for transatlantic viewing) and the poshest one, of course, has an English(ish) accent. For a while I thought she was a villain, but she's not. So that's a strike against typecasting right there.

When I started watching (that is, listening, while I did something else) I was horrified by the saccharine twee-ness of it all: they have to search for the elements of harmony to bring peace to the kingdom; they each have a "cutie mark" that tells them their destiny and appears when they're adolescent ponies, like a particularly informative first period, maybe. They warble sweet tunes about being there for your friends and showing up when needed and helping each other out. They learn valuable lessons about life and love and friendship.

Then I watched this episode and discovered it was essentially a takeoff of The Music Man, which just happens to be a much-favoured musical in this house. And gradually I came to see that the Ponies are pint-sized works of genius.

Which is just as well because now we are all stuck humming the words to "A True True Friend is a Friend in Deed" in the wee hours of the insomniac morning. At least, I think it's not just me.

*Pegasuses. Pegasusi. Pegasusi. Pegasus ponies. They have wings, right?