Circus/Carnival Themed Birthday Party

 

Once a month Jacquelyne Edith Events, LLC, throws a free of charge birthday party for the kids at the Marshall Center and Lassiter Courts Center Boys and Girls Clubs. These events are themed and we have a lot of fun putting them on. This months theme was Circus/Carnival. It was the very first party of the year, so we celebrated all of the kids who had birthdays Jan-April 2014. 

 

Choosing a Theme

Once I decided on a theme I of course went straight to Pinterest for some [p]inspiration. As much as I love Pinterest, I will admit it can be a bit discouraging at times. Like really...do these people take out loans to fund these awesome, extravagant, over the top birthday parties for their two year olds? I digress. I decided to do the best I could with what I had. My biggest challenge was working with the space I had. I always do recon first, scoping out the area, the furniture, and taking pictures of the space. sometimes the way things are and the way we remember them being are two very different things. Any who, the Marshall Courts Boys and Girls Club is a pretty old facility with outdated furniture and whoever designed it had a serious obsession with brown. Not that I have anything against brown, but too much of anything is well...too much. So working with an older facility I decided to go for a vintage circus/carnival theme.

 
Purchasing Supplies and Décor
After what seemed like endless hours surfing Pinterest boards, I visited my local thrift shops. I found two vintage bag gammon suitcases, and a red table cloth for my display table. From Wal-Mart I purchased disposable transparent lace table cloths, treat bags, pin the tail on the Zebra, an awesome polka dot photo booth backdrop with props, a beverage dispenser, cups and napkins, plastic utensils and tickets! Target had the most perfect plates, and party hats. From party city I found huge colorful candles, red lanterns, and reusable red table clothes. I went to Michaels for decorative paper and rope for my flags, and that's also where I got chalk board labels that don't like to stick to anything for longer than five minutes. And my last retail purchase came from Costco, which was a huge jar of assorted flavored jelly beans!

 
  
Thinking Green
I always find a way to utilize the items in my recycling ben, when coordinating an event. For this party I used recycled wine coolers as bottles for ring toss, and a recycled spaghetti jar for the Jelly Bean Guessing Game.
 
The Party
As soon as the children came through the door we had them go straight to the display table where they were given party hats, 10 white tickets for games and treats, empty treat bags and poured lemonade. Once they received all of their items they were seated to eat. We purchased whole wheat Subway sandwiches with turkey and cheese. The pickles were a hit! Once they finished eating they were able to use there tickets to play ring toss, lion tamer, take pictures at the photo booth, purchase teddy grams and jelly beans, pin the tail on the Zebra, and try and guess how many jelly beans were in the jelly bean jar. If they won any of the games they were given red tickets to redeem at the prize table at the end of the party. Once they were worn out from all of that, we sang happy birthday served yummy cake by Scratch Bakery in Port Warwick, and handed out presents. Lastly, we announced the winner of the jelly bean guessing game, and allowed the kids to redeem their red tickets at the prize table.

 
 
Lessons Learned
Overall it was a great, fun filled, organized event and the children had a great time. I was fortunate to have the help of the older Boys and Girls Club members in carrying out this event. I definitely could not have pulled it off without their help setting up and tearing down, serving food, running games, and just helping out with anything the kids needed. They were awesome! I had pretty much everything I needed for this event except a cake cutter....there's always something. Other than that, I didn't run into too many issues. My suggestions would be to plan ahead, use as many checklists and to do lists as you need, come prepared with extra tape, scissors, writing utensils, etc., and definitely solicit as much help as you can get especially when entertaining a large number of kids!
 
Thanks for reading and I hope this was helpful or at least entertaining to somebody out there. Until next time!
 
Jacquelyne Edith