Chatty's circus Extravaganza

For Chatty's 5th birthday party, we went with the circus theme inspired by the phoenix cards we picked up at my friends' "Home party" thanks to this amazing lady I barely had to even think of anything it was all laid out for me already!

I made these pennants, the bowties, and the hats are simply the cheap ones with a pompom hot glue to the top! The photo booths, and games were all homemade too. I picked up the noses, animal masks, tattoos, plastic goldfish, circus loot boxes, photo cut out and the very popular body boppers from the Oriental trading company. I'm fortunate enough to have friends in the states that I could have the items shipped to who then shipped them on to me, to circumvent the extreme shipping prices that American Companies charge anybody outside of the country.

I didn't get photos of everything since I was a bit busy, the weatehr was all over the place, we had light showers at one point which meant everything had to be brought in, unfortunately the weiners for the hotdogs were cooking on the stove at the same time, when I got back to them all the skins had split, and the whole lot were a very unappetising pink mess, thankfully Hubs had insisted on sausages for the adults, we had enough to cover the kids appetites too!

Food was kept pretty simple for a change, some candy, popcorn, cupcakes, cake, watermelon, BBQ'd sausages, drink was simply lemon cordial or water.

Games, were kid led with the exception of the pinata, that Chatty, myself and a lovely friend from Canada, who is now an expat herself made together, we had the goldfish toss, a stack of clear cups with a mix of plastic goldfish or goldfish shaped envelopes with bubble bath gel inside, the kids were given a goldcoin to toss, whichever cup it landed in was theirs to take home, there was a basketball throw, a very small cardboard clown ring toss, the body boppers, plastic bowling pins, and lastly a clown face with holes where the nose, mouth and eyes should be for the kids to try to throw balls in. We also had Chatty's new trampoline set up, the sandbox and the cubby house were all available.

I wish I could say I had made the cake you see in the photos, it was amazing. One of my friends made it. Isn't it beautiful?

As much work as this party was to put together, it has gotten my creative juices flowing and now I'm dreaming up all sorts of other theme related party fun, eg -

dinosaur - use the sandbox to recreate a dinosaur dig;

robot - spray paint all the empty cereal, yoghurt etc bits and pieces silver and then set the kids loose on them to make their own desktp robot or even their own costumes;

rodeo/cowboy - make stick horse with wrapping paper tubes and self coloured horse heads, wool/yarn for reins and then hold stick horse races! ( I already have a cowprint fabric in brown & white for the photobooth for this one!)

Needless I can't wait for Mischief's 5th birthday!