So our youngest celebrated his 7th birthday with family and friends today. It was several months of planning and preparations to do a home party with a carnival theme, and we couldn't have asked for better weather. It was sunny and in the 80's – just perfect.
We had set up various stations including a milk bottle game, ping pong ball in the cup game, ring toss game, hole in one game, football throw game, potato sack race, dunk tank and face painting. My aunt is super creative and did all the face painting which turned out so cute! We rented the dunk tank from a local place and it was the biggest hit of the whole party. My BIL was such a good sport and volunteered to be the dunkee…but it wasn't long before even the kids wanted to get dunked! 🙂
We bought all the prizes from Oriental Trading Company. That place is awesome – all kinds of goodies at a great price. My kind of shop. :) Prizes included a decorate your own binoculars (which actually worked quite well), velvet bookmarks, sunglasses, animal coin bag/key chains, foam photo frame kits, tattoos, army bracelets, and bubbles.
We kept the food simple with lemonade, bottled water, and chocolate/vanilla cupcakes which I decorated with little flags that I made on the computer, then cut out and glued to toothpicks. Before everyone left, we filled "popcorn" bags with lots of candy – large gum balls, giant pixie sticks, jaw breakers, lollipops, cotton candy twists, and we would've had gummy bears but they didn't survive the heat. Actually, the whole jar was full at the start of the party and by an hour into it, they had shrunk down to the point where it looked like the jar was only half full. LOL
Everyone seemed to have a great time and I think we may need to rent the dunk tank again…it was just so much fun! 🙂
