Carnival Party

For my daughter's 6th birthday we had a backyard Carnival Party! This was such a fun theme!! I had been wanting to do a carnival party for some time, but wanted her to be old enough to really play the games. This summer just worked out perfectly to finally do it. It was extremely hot that day, which was a little tiring on the guests, but overall a very successful party!! Check out the photos from the party!

 This is the invitation that I designed on my Mac. I just love the ticket idea! I sell the PDF download if you were interested in having an invite like this for your own carnival party.

We set up this cute banner over the grill for our "concession stand".  ;-) 

What carnival wouldn't be complete without carnival food?! My awesome hubby was the chef for the day. We had funnel cakes, corndogs, fresh-cut fries, and gooey caramel corn. Yum!

I even made him his own Ring Master T-shirt for the party! Haha. He loved it though. I printed off the design onto Avery Fabric Transfer and then ironed it onto the shirt.

I ordered this large sign from Amazon. Hey, I can't make everything.  ;-) 

I made this cute yard decor by printing off the signs on cardstock using a free template, and then glued them to a stick that we had lying around the garage.

This clown photo prop was super time consuming and I wish there was an easier way to duplicate this, but I hand drew the clown by looking at this picture online. Then I painted it with acrylic paint which took quite some time as well! But it was such a fun photo prop!

I bought these carnival cupcake topper flags at Hobby Lobby and had a few left over so we stuck them in the flower pot. 

I bought this adorable circus bow from a lady off Etsy! It was perfect for her special day!

I had a sign posted at each of the games. I downloaded the font "Circus" from DaFont to use for my signs. I also hung a balloon at each game thinking it would be easier for the kids to spot where all the games were, but because it was SO hot that day, all of the balloons popped. :-( Oh well. I used balloon sticks for the first time and I love them for parties! You don't need helium, you just blow the balloons up yourself which is cost efficient, and the kids can take a balloon home with them as a favor. Win win! I didn't get a great picture of all the games, but the games that we had were:

Duck Match (in our kiddie pool)

Car Race (on our playground slide)

Bean Bag Toss (on our cornholl board)

Fossil Dig (in our sandbox)

Ring Toss

Penny Toss

Balloon Darts

Circus Croquet (a croquet set I already had)

Tin Can Toss

Basketball Shoot (already had this Little Tikes basketball hoop)

I think the key for the carnival games is try and incorporate items/games/things you already have. They sell carnival game sets at Party City or Amazon or Walmart, but that can really add up in cost. It's fun to get creative and utilize what you already have around the house or already have set up in the backyard.

I found this cart track tape at Target in the Dollar section. It was perfect! I put the tape going down our playground slide and then just had a bowl of hot wheel cars next to the slide. This game was such a hit! The kids loved it!

This game looked cool and all when I was planning the party, but it was somewhat a pain. I stapled all of the balloons to the fence with my staple gun, which was difficult. Then the hot sun was popping some of them early on. And as kids were popping the balloons, I wasn't resetting the game, so it was kind of short lived. Cool thought though!

I bought these tickets at the Dollar store and my cousins helped me hand them out as the kids played the games so it really felt like they were at a carnival!

We also had a tattoo booth which was just temporary tattoos that I put in a binder. What a fun idea! I also had a bowl of water and a sponge so the kids could put their tattoos on. 

 I think the highlight of the party was the face painting! We hired a lady we know from church and she did such a great job! She stayed for about 2 1/2 hours and several of the kids got 2 paintings!

We also had a potato sack race which was really fun! I had the kids in three different heats because I only had 6 sacks. I purchased the potato sacks off Amazon.

 I had been collecting several little trinkets to use for the prize booth. I hit up Party City, the Dollar store, and the Target dollar section to find all the goodies. I had both boy and girl items to choose from. Originally I was going to have each prize worth a certain ticket value, but that got too complicated because I didn't want some kids to leave with tons of stuff and other kids to leave with nothing. So every kid was able to choose 1 big item and 1 smaller item off the table to be fair. I think it worked out pretty good, but you could forego the whole prize booth and just give out favors instead. A couple great favor ideas would be animal crackers or cracker jacks.

I made this cake topper by printing off a horse silhouette onto gold cardstock, cutting it out and glueing it to a colored straw. I thought it turned out super cute!

The cupcake toppers were from Hobby Lobby.