Candyland Party -4yr- Front Yard Game Board

My soon to be 4 year old son told me he wanted to have a Candy Land birthday party idea in January and since I like to go all out" on my kid's parties that gave me more than enough time to get started.  I always like to buy things a little at a time so the price tag doesn't seem too steep.  Anyways when he told me about wanting his Candy Land Party my mind started racing for an idea that would be better than any idea I have had thus far.  And I must say the party was a hit. 

For invitations we found a nice picture of King Candy standing in front of Candy Castle and we printed those out with all the information for the party like where when etc..

For decorations this is where it got a little tricky.  I designed on AutoCAD the layout of our front yard and began the task of decorating it.  For the game board I took sheets of plywood and cut them in rectangles 10.5" x 13" so as to leave a 1" space all around an 8.5" x 11" sheet of paper.  I then cut the squares out of the plywood rounding the corners.  I sanded and painted each square white.  After that I glued a sheet of cardstock paper to each square following the pattern of the candy land board game.  We even made the pink squares with each of the designs printed on them.  I created the two licorice squares as well for a purpose later to be discussed.  Then I took each square 48 squares total and I layed them out in according to my layout I designed on the computer and sewed each piece together with a piece of rope so when it was time for the party the layout was easier and each piece of game board layed out exactly where I wanted it.

After each piece of game board received the specific color I painted each piece again with a clear coat varnish to protect the paper and make for easy clean up if they got dirty.  After the board game was complete I set to work on the rainbow Pass.  In the game it is called Rainbow Pass but I made ours a rainbow bridge.  I cut a 2 half round pieces of plywood and nailed 1" x 3" boards to them to make a bridge and then painted it in a rainbow.  Then I sprayed it with glitter to make it look sparkly.    After everything for the board game itself was completed then came the task of creating each character.  I drew an outline of each character on plywood cut it out with a jig saw painted it white and then painted each one individually creating a life size stand up of each one to place in their respective areas around the board.   

Then came the creation of the candy decorations.  For the lollipops I used 11" Dia. X 1" thick foam discs and inserted a dowel stick into each one.  I bought different lengths of dowels to create different sized lollipops each wrapped in different color cellophane and a ribbon.  I also bought Pool Noodles and wrapped them in a circle to create lollipops for the lollipop game to be discussed later.  For gum drops we used sand pails painted with glitter and small clay pots used for flowers -  we had them set up in a "path" creating gum drop pass.  Hanging above the party we had clear "take home" dishes wrapped in cellophane then we passed a string of white Christmas lights through them and created candy Lights.  For Mr. Mint and the Mint forest I cut out a large Candy Cane used for the game and layed out white batting for the snow.  We used christmas light candy canes and placed them throughout the "snow". Last but not least I created a giant "spinner" with each color of each space painted on it so instead of drawing cards to move the kids spun their way around the board.  

Activities:  Our Activities included a mini game for each of the pink squares.  For the Gingerbread square I cut our of plywood a giant gingerbread man and cut holes where the gum drops would be and we made gingerbread men bean bags and had a bean bag toss.  The prize for this game a snack bag full of ginger snap cookies.  For Mint Forrest I created a giant candy cane and had eye hooks placed in it and the kids had to take a candy cane hook another candy cane carry it to the giant candy cane and hook it to the hooks.  Prize for this game was a red and white Christmas mint. 

For the Lollipop square we had the pool noodle lollipops placed in a circle 6 of them.  Then as the teams landed on that square we played the lollipop song as they walked around the lollipops then when the song stopped we chose a specific lollipop and the child closest to that lollipop won.  Prize for this game was a lollipop.  Then for Peanut space we filled our child's sand box with packaging peanuts and placed one real peanut inside the kids where then to find the real peanut in an allotted amount of time. The prize for this game was a Reese's Peanut Butter cup.

For the Gum Drop space we had three of our pot gumdrops on a table and placed one real gumdrop under one of them then mixed them up.  The kids had to guess where the gumdrop was.  The prize for this game was a bag of spiced drops.  For the Ice Cream space we created a lake out of blue tarp and taped square pieces of paper to it and on the bottom side we placed different pictures of items you would find in a lake.  The children had to turn over the papers to try and find the one paper that had the snowflake on it.  If they found it they won.  The prize for this game was bubbles.  That was the extent of our games except the entire party being a game in and of itself. Here is a link to some of the pictures:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/23007998@N00/   Costumes:  None where required but you could dress up as a candy land character if you wanted to. 

Party Snacks:  For this part of the party I created a Large Lollipop sucker tree and put in there 30 lollipops and we had a large buffet table and set up a candy buffet with every kind of candy you could imagine.  We created a candy store and let the kids "buy" their candy.  We had a chocolate fountain for the "Gloppy" area and had fruit and pretzels for dipping.  We also set up a  snow cone machine and made snow cones for each kid that wanted one.  The Candy Buffet was set up at the end of the board game as a kind of "prize" for winning the game.

The Cake was a three tiered cake that I covered it in multi colored marshmallow fondant and used sugar cones for spires to create a candy Castle Cake. Our favors were the candy from the candy buffet.  "