Carnival Party 9yr - Clown Cupcakes

For my daughters 9th birthday we decided to go all out and have a huge carnival in our yard. For the invitations: I used paper with a balloon border and printed them myself. They said - HURRY, HURRY, COME ONE, COME ALL/STEP RIGHT UP AND HAVE A BALL/TO CELEBRATE MADDY'S 9TH BIRTHDAY/THE CARNIVALS IN TOWN/HIP HIP HOORAY! WE'LL HAVE GAMES, PRIZES, POPCORN AND MORE/COTTON CANDY, HOTDOGS, AND TREATS GALORE/TATOOS AND HAIR PAINTING TO NAME A FEW/BRING THIS MONEY AND BUY A HAT TOO/THE FUN CANT START UNTIL YOU ARRIVE/SO WE HOPE TO SEE YOU BETWEEN 2 AND 5/SUNDAY OCTOBER 1ST/AT THE HELMS' FAIRGROUNDS 123 MAIN ST. URTOWN US. PLEASE RSVP TO THE CARNIE HOTLINE/MY NUMBER.I included a huge fake $5 bill in the envelope for them to use at the party. I was told this was very exciting for the recipients.

For the party: To greet our guest we turned our wooden lemonade stand into a ticket booth by taping a white table cloth around it and taping on red stripes. My husband made a special TICKETS sign to hang in place of the lemonade sign.This booth was set just inside our back gate. We let the little brothers be in charge of this booth. They greeted each guest with a party bag(a plain white lunch bag with a huge 1 and 10 dollar bill,24 tickets,a pack of 4 crayons and 2 nametag stickers-one for the bag and one for their shirt!)  We used 6x6 tents with white plastic tableclothes tacked up around them half way up and multi colored flag banner strung along them to make 7 game booths.

Each game required one ticket.Each booth had a sign we made using cardboard and markers, just saying what it was and how many things,like darts,balls,shots that you got for 1 ticket.  Games included were: BALLOON POP(used a large piece of cardboard to tape the balloons to and purchased darts and balloons from oriental trading), TIN CANS( I saved up 12 cans from vegetables and just peeled the labels off), BASKETBALL THROW(using a little tykes basketball hoop), DUCK POND(using ducks from oriental trading and a rubbermaid container for the pons), SUCKER PULL(made the tree from a wooden paper towel holder by drilling small holes all over it at an angle), BOTTLE SHOOT(I saved 12 - 16.9oz water bottles, removed the labels and let the kids paint them primary colors, these were set up and the kids were allowed 3 shots from a nerf gun to try to shoot them down), BALL TOSS(I used push pins to tack 12 yellow disposable cups to a piece of cardboard, that was then placed on a table then each child got 3 balls to try to make into a cup. We also had a CUPCAKE WALK" instead of the traditional cake walk. I wrapped a KFC bucket with a piece of pink construction paper that I had accordian folded to make it look like a cupcake liner. Then I glued a bunch of cotton balls to the bottom side of a paper plate and glued a red ball right in the middle this was the icing and cherry on top part of the cupcake it functioned as the lid.Inside the cupcake were the prizes the kids won instead of an actual cake. We used carnival themed music I ordered off of ebay for this game.

Each game had 3 different prizesyou could definitely use less than that. They were given enough tickets to play each game three times that way they could win one of every prize. They won regardless of how well they did at the game.(I saved the plastic containers from strawberriestomatoesgrapes and stuff like that and used them to hold my prizes.)   We also had a 10x10 tent set up for hair painting($5) tatoos($1) and silly hats($10).They used the fake money for this.(I taped the tatoos and hats to big pieces of cardboard to display them.) We also set up our jumphouse at the other end of the yard this was free and a big hit with the toddlers that were too small for the games.

I turned my patio gazebo into the food booth with a tablecloth tacked half way up all the way around and even hung a cardboard Food Booth sign and a menu.All of the food was free too!  We served traditional carnival food - hot dogs popcorn nachos pretzels cotton candy(I bagged this into smaller bags ahead of time and clothespinned it to the gazebo) big pickles on a sticksno conessodaiced tea and lemonade. We had a clown pinata to tie in with our carnival theme. I just made cupcakes with balloon picks in them but you could do something more creative like clown cupcakes or a clown cake. I had 4 big round tables with red and white checked table clothes and 10 white chairs at each table. This was plenty as nobody sat long. I bought 24 regular helium balloons to decorate the table and around the yard and hung the remaining flag banner along the fence. We even hung a banner that said Happy 9th Birthday Maddy across the game booth tents.

My husband works for a tent company so that helped out alot but you could easily make the boothes by roping them off and hanging the flag banner along the rope. We enlisted the help of alot of family to work all of the booths.One of my sisters even dressed up like a clown to do this! You should try to have one person for every game two for the food and two for the tatoo/hairpainting/hats booth. Most of my supplies came from Oriental Trading(flag banner pinata small balls for gamessilly hats) Smalltoys.com(almost all of my prizes came from here they are sooo cheap!) Walmart(ticketsinvitation paper white lunch bagsname tags hair paint tatoos paper goods and a bunch of our food dual sno cone maker). I got helium balloons from the local carnival supply the day of the party for $4 a dozen this was cheaper than buying the little machine at walmat. All in all I spent around $300. But it was one heck of a birthday party! The kids had sooo much fun. After everyone played the games 3 times and the adults weren't in the booths they took turns "working" the booths. They had as much fun doing this as they had playing the games for prizes!  This was a very fun party to plan and throwas well! It was a little bit of work the day before and the day of the party but definatley worth every minute of it!     "