Altered to Perfection: August 2013

So, I am going to tell you right now that this is a VERY heavy photo post. Lots and lots of pictures, but I wanted to be able to share all the ideas I used for the party. My little guy has been wanting a carnival party for a long time. We don't have the biggest space as we only have a patio and not really a "back yard", but we made it work! Come along and see what we came up! We had a great time on a very MINIMAL budget! Really! You can do it too!

This was the invite I made. Super simple mini banner. I added a balloon punch to the envelope. Super cute.

If you like doing really nice goody bags, I advise you to shop in advance, looking for the best deals and try to think outside the box. Make your items work for your theme. The one item I was set on (my splurge item) was the large carnival swirl lollipops. I got them at Smart n Final for a little less than a dollar each. They were the perfect touch!

This is my amazing husband and I. I am so thankful for such a supportive guy. He helped out with everything and was very involved with it all - as usual. I just love him so much!

The birthday boy... a little excited, yes? haha

Here is in the "Photo Booth" with his sister Naomi.

I am no baker, but was determined to keep costs down by making the cake/cupcakes. I wanted to stay with our carnival theme so I chose funfetti cake mix for all of it. I was not interested in trying to make a cake from scratch. lol I also picked up some Duncan Hines Frosting Creations frosting. It comes plain and white and you can buy a separate little packet of colored flavoring. I chose blue cotton candy. It was amazing.

I also used Cream Cheese flavored frosting on the cupcakes and then after watching this youtube video on how to make marshmallows look like popcorn, put my awesome daughter Taryn to work on them. The trick to really making the marshmallows look like popcorn are to snip several of the marshmallows with scissors to make it look like a POPPED kernel. They were perfect!

These are chocolate dipped oreos that were meant to be dipped oreo lollipops. Well, I couldn't get the little sticks in the cookie filling without breaking them. Maybe Double Stuff would have worked. So I ended up just dipping them in the candy melts and sprinkles. There was not one left. =)

What's a carnival without popcorn and cotton candy??

Another great thing about carnivals are the games!! Here we have the Tin Can Crash. I used old vegetable cans and covered them with scrapbook paper I had at home. One ball from Marco's toybox and we had a game!

Here was one of the more popular games - Ring Toss. We bought some diving rings in the seasonal section at Big Lots. These are the rings you can use in the pool for diving after. We had the cones in the garage already. Great game for all ages.

This was the Duck Pond. I had fish bowls already from a previous event. We bought a bag of rubber duckies for $3 at a party store. The idea is to throw or bounce the ping pong ball into a bowl. This game was really challenging, but lots of fun!

I wanted to make pinwheels for everyone, but didn't have the pins that I usually use to make them spin. So they were more of a decoration. I made them and then glued them to Pixi Stix, plopped them into some artichoke jars that a friend had saved for me and added popcorn for filler. Boom. Centerpieces are done.

I realized that even though I make banners all the time in my shop, I have never really made one like this for any of my own children. What on earth? lol So I decided I would only use papers I had on hand. I also made some larger pin wheels for the banner. I used Cricut Storybook cartridge for the letters. I was really happy with how it turned out. You can order your banner made by me right HERE.

I also saved frappucino bottles for a while knowing I wanted to use them for something. I also had some nice bottles from my Prima Flowers. I removed the labels from all of them and ran them through the dishwasher on high temp. Then I covered each with a strip of scrapbook paper and added a paper straw (bought at Marshall's) and voila! We had adorable little bottles for the lemonade. The kids loved drinking out of these. Some of them asked to take them home and of course, I let them.
For food, I served grilled burgers, nachos, corn dogs and watermelon slices.

The whole family was involved in this party. Hannah my oldest daughter had a photo booth.

I don't have a Cricut cart that has any of the photo booth props, so I decided to search the internet. I found THIS site where she offers 12 pages of free printable props. She had three choices: black, color, or outlines. Since we were working on a budget, we decided to print out the outlines and then my girls got to work with some Crayola markers. We added a bit of bling and they were perfect. I hot glued them to some skewers and then placed them in clean pickle jars that I wrapped with scrapbook paper. Done and done.

We wanted to do some kind of face painting booth, but I found this kit at Ross for less than $7. These were a hit with the kids AND adults. My daughter, Taryn ran this booth. We called it Arm Art.

Marco taking a refreshing lemonade break.

For the Spray Away game I used a styrofoam block, 6 golf tees, 6 ping pong balls (99cent store), and a water gun. The idea is to see who can shoot the most ping pong balls off the tees in 15 seconds. Lots of concentration and a steady hand needed for this game.

Here's Mia having fun at the Ring Toss.

We called this game Duck Race. We wanted to find something that was long and narrow for the water, but we couldn't find anything within our budget. So my awesome husband went out on the hunt and found this Seed Starter for about $4. We added two rubber duckies and some straws and the kids lined up to race their ducks. Really cute and easy for all to play.

I wasn't going to have a pinata for the party and my son looked at my like I was nuts. haha. No pinata? Inconceivable. So yeah. We got a really nice one for $14. Can't beat that with a stick! hahahohohehehe. Oh, that was a good one... *sigh*