Patriotic Dollar Store Horse Jump Decorations

If you live in The United States, today is Independence Day, or more commonly referred to as The Fourth of July. And since I’m not a big fan of fireworks for celebrating (they scare my horses) I decided to be patriotic in another way.

I know it comes as no surprise that I really like to decorate horse jumps. So I decided to challenge myself, and see if I could find decorations for a jump at the dollar store. And I was not disappointed. I found so many things that I could use to make a patriotic horse jump for my arena!

And the best part, I spent about $5.00. Not too bad when thinking about anything equestrian related. And I did add in some extras from a patriotic jump I made a few years ago, including some flowers that I spray painted blue.

Talk about a fun and affordable project! And you can use these type of decorations for desensitizing too. It doesn’t always have to be about horse jumps, unless your me.

So I put together a basic jump, and then got to work adding the extras.

I chose a plain white rails and my light blue standards. I could have used the darker blue ones, but I liked the light blue, and how they looked when they were finished.

And while I was out playing with my horse jumps, a cool military helicopter was watching what I was doing.

Ok, not really, but it was cool to see this guy flying over while I was making the jump, and recording a video.

But back to the jump! I took some patriotic bunting and attached it with painter’s tape to the rail.

The material is like Mylar, like they use for balloons, so it fold around the rail perfectly, almost like I painted it on!

And then I took some red white and blue garland, and wrapped the standards.

I used one 9′ strand of the garland per standard. And again secured it with the painters tape.

And then I bought some balloon weights, and decorated the top of each standard.

They are weighted, so they stay on the standards really well, even when it’s windy.

And the final part of my patriotic jump was to add in some flower filler.

I had made these several years ago. I spray painted the plastic pots, and then added in the flowers. I didn’t have any blue flowers, so I spray painted some.

And then end result is this….

Not to shabby for $5.00 right?

And even taking my horses out into the arena and having them walk by this jump got their attention. But after several walk arounds, they didn’t care. It was just another crazy thing their human had made for their enjoyment.

And I made a video of the entire process if you want to see how I put it all together.