Carnival Party 1yr - Cotton Candy

PRIZES~ Before anything we did we spent a 1/2 a year collecting prizes that were on sale for example at easter and valentines day at walmart they had little toys like little yo yos and stuff they didn’t sale after the holiday so things went 50% offoff. Also we went to the thrift store and found stuffed animals with the tags still on them, they had not been used, we also had leighs left over from an ealrier party and we got tons of beads from a family friend, so after all that we had more than enough prizes.

INVITATIONS ~ I made the invitations myself using a card program. They were printed in black ink using colored card stock, the colors for the party were hot pink and lime green so I used those colors. They had black polka dots and my daughter picture in a circle,at the bottom was a carnival with a big clown going up the side of the invitation. The invitation said Cotton Candy and lots of fun NAME is turning 1. Date time rsvp below that.

DECORATIONS  - To make the carnival part we got palletts from a garden place, they were going to throw them away and so we got them, it took 3 pallets for one booth nailing them together. We covered the pallets with plastic table cloths we bought at the dollar tree. In the center we had wood going up and painted on cardboard a clown to make a photo booth, The edges of the photo booth were covered in pink crepe paper that we cut a scallop edge on. We did two pieces of wood going up and tied string between them and hung the stuffed animals from it.Each game booth had a sign painted of what the game was. The Tables the people ate at had black table coths , these were just cheap fabric cut in a circle. As the centerpieces we had double sided picture frames with pictures of my daughter from all months in them they weighed down 1 hot pink 1 lime green and 1 white balloon. The food tables were covered in green plastic table cloths.

FOOD~ We had hot dogs, and little individual chip bags. We had bought like a hot pink small square fabric laundry basket and put lime green tisuue paper in the bottom and put the chips in there. There were juice boxes for the kids lemonade and pink lemonade and bottled water. In the center of the party was a popcorn machine we had borrowed from my grandfathers church , we bought popcorn boxes from a craft store, they were I believe 8 for a $1.00. We also served pasta salad, so the adults could have something. We had several different desserts lemon pie, german chocolate cake ,and a chocolate crème cake, again that’s for the adults.We also had cotton candy. The cake was a cupcake cake bought at Wal-mart it was 24 cupcakes and it was about $13 it was in the shape of a clowns head with a party hat on the clowns hat we had made lime green with a pink flower on it.We also had ice cream

Games ~ We had 6 games. Fish pond we used a dowell rod with a string and a close pin and plastic bag they wood drop that down and the prized would go in the plastic bag and the kids would get it out. Bottle Toss, to make this game We painted the gerbers puffs container (4 of them) stacked them up on a painted box. With a bean bag to knock them over.

Frog pond - for this we had three boxes covered in blue fabric with three circles of green fabric on top of it representing the water and the lily pad, on top of the 3 green circles were three clear plastic bowls with white paper cut and placed in them to make them look like flowers, we sat stuffed animal forgs around them, you had to throw a plastic frog into the bowl. Dart throw Balolons and darts this was only for the older kids. The grand prize game ,we bought cotton candy in little buckets so I washed them and painted them blue and put numbers on them and the kids tried throwing the ball into each 6 cups. Bean bag toss - this was just a game we bought at the store it ended up being cheaper than making it and we will have it for other events. We let the kids get their own prizes at every game except the fish pond. The prizes were put into boxes I painted, I had save diaper boxes knowing I would need them.

The kids were very good and only got the right amount of prizes. I also had bought little zip sandwich bags and put 1 with animal crackers, 1 with jelly beans and 1 with pink and green mand m's. These were also used as prizes. The only thing I would reccomend is that a 1 yr old gets extremely tired , so try to do cake and presents early and then let the kids go back and play. My daughter was so exhausted, she was miserable by the time cake was there. Also We just had them get their prizes in walmart bags , we were going to buy white gift bags for them to use, but the kids took home so much stuff they wouldnt have fit in that anyway so im glad we didnt buy it and I wouldnt buy it the kids didnt care what they were put in.Just slow down and enjoy it thats the most important thing, and i would designate a video and camera person my husband had a hard time playing with my daughter and doing both.