Violet decided that she wanted a Carnival birthday party this year... and I have always wanted to do a carnival party, so I was ALL ABOUT IT! We painted signs and hung colorful flag banners...
Put up tents (Thank you Ted Wiens Tire & Auto for your canopies) and made some rad games...
And designed plenty of fun photo ops! All the signs were painted and colored by Violet and Riley.
Of course, it was a hundred and eleventy that day, so it was also a Pool Party! We called the pool our big Dunk Tank :)
This is one of the Carnies. She's in the Witness Protection Program, so we will just call her "Erin".
Everyone participating in the games...
Another Carnie, this one in charge of the Tic Tac Toe game...
Watch out for this guy. He was in charge of the Ring Toss, and let's just say we are pretty sure he wasn't playing it fair. He had shifty eyes.
This Carnie handled the Duck Shot game, one of the hardest of the day... you had to use the little Nerf gun to shoot a ducky off the sawhorse. Seems pretty easy, but nothing is as easy as it looks...
What's a carnival without Plinko? I'll tell you! It's no carnival at all!
There was even a golf game for the kiddos to play...
The kids loved "Spilled Milk", where they had to knock down plastic milk jugs...
and thanks to Oriental Trading Company and the $1 section of Target, there were plenty of prizes for all!
And look! I was there too!!
Riley showed us how to master the Skee-Ball game...
and here I am again with "Erin"
Of course we had grilled hot dogs!
and everyone took a turn taking pics in our silly photobooth.
The carnival really was a great time. All the adults who came were "put to work" at various stations, and all the kids loved going from game to game throughout the afternoon and evening. By making most of the games ourselves and shopping sales for the prizes, we really kept the budget down... and the kids happy!Of course, now everyone's asking how I'm going to top THIS party! Hopefully I can come up with something in the next year... haha :)
6 comments:
Seriously, how *do* you top that???!!! What great ideas and what a tremendous amount of work went into those carnival games. You could totally loan those out to church VBS programs or other parents. Happy belated birthday, Violet. What an awesome mommy you have!
The key was a lot of planning ahead and some serious creativity. The kids came up with all the games and we brainstormed how to use the stuff we had around the house to make it happen. other than the skee-ball game, everything else was stuff we made ourselves (including Plinko, which we made from a piece of plywood, a couple hundred nails, and plastic air-hockey pucks). Oh and we did end up donating Plinko to a school PTA for their annual carnival :)
What a great idea for a party!! It looks like everyone had a blast!
Ridiculously cute & creative! Looks likes so much fun was had!
sigh. i miss you. thank you for keeping my identity hidden.
i'm scared of myself, although i don't have small hands, nor do i smell like cabbage.
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