Carnival Girl Party 8yr - Big Top Tent

I had invited children from the ages of 2-10, so I was trying to think of different activities that would be safe and fun for everyone. I got most of my party items from either Oriental Trading or Party City. I had the party in the front, backyard and inside the house, since I don't have a lot of space.    

For the invitations, I had bought spinner card invitations, which really worked. You could spin it and it would spin on games, cake, fun, prizes, etc.  On the back of the invitation was all the party information.   

For decorations, I had large pinwheels going up the walkway to my front door and I made a balloon arch, using all the colors of the rainbow. I tried going with a red and white scheme for the tables in the backyard. Then I taped a red and white bunting in front of the tables for the games. I put 4 balloon weights on each corner of my deck where the games were going to be held. I tied fishing line and arranged balloons in a pattern of red and white until there was enough to make it look like a Big Top Tent". (I blew up the balloons on the helium tank and tied the balloon around the fishing line and arranged the weights diagonally from each other until it looked like an upside down "V". Once I did one side diagonally I did the same to the other side overlapping each other. It looked great!  I then made these signs on my computer with a picture and the directions for the games.

The games I had were M&M's & Jellybean Estimation Jars (which I used recycling sauce and jelly jars) Magnetic Darts ring toss fishing for fish (magnetic fish with numbers on the bottom) face painting & tattoos. The fishing game I used a Sharpie and wrote numbers on the bottom. Whichever fish you caught that's the amount of tickets you won. This was the most popular floor game. The kids all gathered around and won a mass amount of tickets! We also had a carnival craft table which consisted of carnival fuzzy bookmarks ribbon and markers.   

Next we went in the front yard and had our Potato Sack Races. They were so much fun! The kids raced at least 4 times!! They were really having a blast! Next we did egg spoon races. We had different rainbow colored wooden spoons with matching color wooden eggs (red orange yellow green blue & purple). After the races we came inside and had some lunch.    For lunch my daughter did not want the traditional pizza so we made her favorites:  mini hot dogs in a blanket curly fries garden salad bean salad corn on the cob and Mickey Mouse chicken nuggets. For drinks I made fresh squeezed pink lemonade (I added cranberry juice) iced tea and bottled water. After lunch I put on a Carnival CD which I purchased at Party City and the children played Freeze Dance using a bubble machine. While they were dancing I made a carnival cupcake display as my cake.   

I made a red velvet giant cupcake cake(big top cupcake mold)& frosted the bottom chocolate and the top white. For the regular sized cupcakes I baked cotton candy cupcakes and buttercream cotton candy frosting both from scratch. I used an apple corer took out the middle and filled it with vanilla pudding into the center of each one. I swirled the frosting onto the top of each cupcake and put in a mini pinwheel into each cupcake. I also pre-made these carnival centerpieces ahead of time and I placed them into the cupcake also. I used small lollipop sticks carnival stickers and hot glued them onto the stick. I arranged the cupcakes around the big cupcake and placed my daughter's cupcake on top of the large cupcake. Her cupcake had a ferris wheel and the pinwheel with a small candle.

Each cupcake had a mini doily underneath and also had a dab of cotton candy in the middle to go along with the theme of the cupcakes. As a final touch I bought rainbow twizzlers and arranged them in rainbow colors connecting the cake with the cupcakes to look like one ferris wheel cake display! It looked AMAZING!!!! Some of the other cupcake centerpieces I made were bumper cars cotton candy carousel horses popcorn tickets snow cones etc. They were really cute and such a big hit with both adults and kids! Even the adults told me they were better than the bakery!   

After the cupcakes we played the song "I want candy" and the children all had some cotton candy from a machine we rented. Then they went by the prize table chose their prizes and put them into these rainbow colored treat boxes. The choices I had for the prizes were a ring toss (velcro ring with a velcro ball NEON punch ball balloons sticky assortments (they chose 4 each) carnival rubber duckies (I reserved these for the toddlers) slap bracelets & silly bands. The other favors in their boxes had swirl lollipops swirl lollipop pad & matching pen pinwheels tattoos & the bookmarks they made. My daughter told me that her friends from school were talking about her party for days!!   

As thank you cards I made them myself. I found bright yellow paper and red & white striped scrapbooking paper. I cut each sheet of paper into 4's to make 4 squares. I cut the red and white pattern to make a "curtain" on 2 sides of the yellow paper. I took a quarter and traced around to make little circles & cut it out (it looked more like a canopy on top). I cut out each child's picture from the party and placed it in the middle. I wrote a thank you message laminated them & put magnetic tape behind them. I wrapped them in tissue paper and mailed them. This is a nice memory for the children and the parents to stick on their refrigerators and I thought families could really appreciate it even though it took a little time and effort. I even made one of my own daughter! How could I not?  :) "