Circus Party -2yr- Balloon Pop with Darts

I wanted my second daugther's first birthday party to be very special so we did a Circus theme. 

I got some royal blue fabric with different colored circles on it at WAl-Mart and made Gracie a cute top with bright yellow ruffled sleeves and yellow shorts. The theme was yellow and red. The yard was decorated with lots of colorful balloons, helium and regular. We had games all around the perimeter of the yard. 

We had Ring Toss, Pop the balloons(with darts). Inside the balloons were kid jokes.  I painted a clown juggling on a board and my husband cut out the circles for the bean bag toss.  We had a fishing game and of course, bubbles. 

We even took a six by eight and let them do tight rope walk complete with a small rainbow umbrella that we got when my other daughter was in the school play.  I had circus music playing the whole time ($5 cd at Borders).  I had a young girl doing the face painting and my sister dressed up as a clown and made balloon animals. 

My young nephew is into doing magic so he put on a magic show. It was hot so I had little jugs on ice and I made tri-colored rocket pops out of jello.  I also had small bags of peanuts and popcorn in real red and white striped boxes that I got from the party store. We had a sack race - even the clown did the sack race.  We also did the limbo complete with limbo music.

Even the adults got into it, including my mother in law.  The older folks also got their faces painted. I gave each child a large bag with their name on it and had them each pick out a prize - I got larger prizes from the dollar store instead of small prizes.  I got colorful clown plates, cups and napkins from the party store and used that theme to paint a sign with a clown that said "Happy Birthday Grace" and we put helium balloons on it and stuck it in the ground outside.  I had a red tablecloth, red and yellow napkins and clown napkins. 

One of my favorite things was the centerpiece I made - I took several pictures of Grace throughout the year (in her Halloween costume, Christmas, newborn, etc.) cut them into circles and mounted them on colored foam shaped like balloons. I hot glued them to bar-b-q skewers.  I covered a small open box to look like a present - red paper with a big yellow bow) and put styrofoam in it.  I stuck the balloon skewer pictures in the styrofoam at different levels. 

I did colorful curly ribbon on some other skewers to fill in the open areas.  I took one of the cups and cut the two clowns out, put them on skewers and put them in there.  The top balloon said "Happy Birthday Grace" and had glitter around it.  I also took the most recent picture and made it into a fake blue ribbon, complete with real ribbon and took my white Scribbles paint and wrote "1st" on the ribbon part (for her first birthday) - I covered the styrofoam with that red shredded paper you get from the party store. 

My next favorite thing was the carousel cake that I got the idea off of the Internet.  I iced the cake yellow and piped it with red and put colorful party sprinkles all over it.  Put the #1 candle in the middle and then put colorful candy sticks around the top of the cake, I put icing on the backs of plastic horses and mounted them to the candy sticks for the carousel.  I then took a round piece of red cardboard which I had glued different colored circles on and cut a slit in the circle and then formed it into a semi cone shape for the roof of the carousel. I hot glued one of those tiny plastic balloon clusters on the top.  VERY CUTE!  Lastly, the whole house inside was decorated with balloons. 

Everyone had a wonderful time - it was a lot of work but very well worth it.