After weeks of planning, crafting, and cooking the ultimate Birthday Bash was a success! My little brother, Dean, turned 18!!! I can still hardly believe it! We decided to do something big for his birthday/graduation. We were playing around with the idea of having classic games there, like we did when we were growing up. His birthday always falls around Memorial day and the Strawberry Festival. This time of year always reminds me of the Festival rides, food, and games, thus the carnival birthday party theme was born! We made all the best foods and some fun games with prizes. Since I made everything my self, it was a fairly inexpensive party. Would be great for a first birthday party. You can even make it more adult friendly! (any recipes available will have a link directing you to the page!)
For the invitations, I used the mobile app, Phonto, to arrange the invitation print. We copied this to Microsoft word and printed on cream colored card stock. (For all my card stock, I shopped Michaels Craft store sales. They often have their packs on paper on sale) We trimmed the invitations and glued them to red card stock.
We took black card stock to make a sleeve around the invitation. I took twine ribbon from the Dollar Store to wrap around each invitation. I had stamps and tags left over from our wedding invitations to add to the front.
My parent's back yard is on the smaller side with their pool taking up most of the room. We set out a tent in the front yard with tables, decorations, and games. We took mason jars and filled them with flowers from the dollar store. We placed small red peanut crates with candy peanuts, and pictures of Dean over the years. I used the scraps from the other banners I made to place around the front of the tent. We have a cornhole boards and life size jenga we made last year that we placed in the front yard as well.
Through the front door we had our food table and desserts.
For the main course we had pulled pork bbq, baked macaroni & cheese, baked beans,
BBQ greenbeans, pasta salad, coleslaw, and cornbread. Michaels was having a 60% off sale on their "Alphabet Soup Letter" collection. I found some cool metal letters to spell out his name on the food table at $1.50 a piece.
Now anyone that knows me, knows that I LOVE to make desserts. From cupcakes to trifle dishes, so it was only natural that we went overboard at the dessert table. We made a banner that said "Blue Ribbon Bakery".
We had mini Oreo cream pies,
Mini banana pudding bites, grandmas pecan tarts, Strawberries and cream cupcakes, Dreamsicle trifle, chocolate cake, and fresh fruit!
Look how cute it all is with the banner!
We also brought a fryer to make deep fried Twinkies! They are really easy and so delicious!
We had TONS of games in the backyard.
We had originally made a ticket booth but unfortunately it was a little windy outside and it wasn't doing well. We took the popcorn "Welcome" banner and placed it by the back entrance of the fence with a sign and a bucket filled with tickets.
The banner was made from stripped paper at Michaels and tissue paper. We printed the letters out, glued them to each rectangle, and hot glued rolled up balls of yellow tissue paper to the tops.
We had a "Fish Toss" game set up. We placed plastic cups (from the Dollar Store) each filled with water. 4 of the cups had rubber fish in them. If they tossed the ping pong ball into the cup with the fish they won tickets. They were allowed 3 shots per turn.
A Hula Hoop Contest
A water balloon race.
We used plastic spoons and had the kids run a race with water balloons.
Ring Toss.
Costco sells the classic soda bottles. We used those and rings for the classic ring toss game.
We also had a photo booth set up to go with Dean's new camera he got for his Birthday.
We set up a table with props, including paper Emojis we made.
For the pictures, we took an old frame and strung wire through the sides. We wrote everyone's names on extra cardstock with clips. When guests arrived, they swapped their names out with a picture from our photobooth!
We even had a piñata!
Inside we had a "kissing booth". We filled a jar with 348 Hershey kisses! The kids had to make their best guess with how many were in the jar. The winner got 50 tickets and all the candy!
Each of our booths and games had a sign going over the rules, how many tickets to enter, and what the winner received.
We used frames from the Dollar store and painted them with chalk board paint to make them reusable.
Games not pictured:
Fishing Pond
We placed 30 rubber ducks with hooks screwed in their backs. We made fishing poles to fish the winning ducks out.
Kleenex Dance Game
Take 2 empty Kleenex boxes and tie to the kids wastes. Place 5 ping pong balls in each. Have the kids dance until all the balls fall out. First to loose all the balls wins!
Inside we had our Prize booth all courtesy of the Dollar Store. We separated them from 1,2,3,4,5,6, and 7 ticket prizes.
The highlight of the evening was the pie throwing contest. I had my husband cut holes out of the boards for my mom and dad to bravely stand in the line of fire.
We used pie tins from the Dollar Store which came in a pack of 3. Instead of making pies, we used the spray whipped cream into the tins.
My parents getting "pied" in the face
And of course, Big sister had to Pie the birthday boy in the face!
I hope you are able to take some of our success stories from our "Budget Backyard Carnival" and make some great parties of your own!
