A Birthday Carnival

This year, my son wanted his birthday at Wurstfest. If you aren’t familiar with this festival, I highly recommend checking it out! Unfortunately, Wurstfest was cancelled this year due to COVID-19. So I asked my son if we could have Wurstfest here. He replied with, “Let’s have a carnival at our house!” So a carnival it was!

This party was so fun to plan and fairly easy to put together! I incorporated some fair favorites, with corn dogs, cotton candy, and a balloon artist – which was the crowd favorite.

For games, I didn’t want people volunteering to run “booths,” and most of the children were around my son’s age, so we just put out games that they could enjoy without waiting in a line:

Corn hole
Hula hoops
A soccer net and ball
Ikea’s dart game
Knock the cans game
Photo area
Temporary tattoos
Balloon artist

Nearly the entire party was ordered from Oriental Trading and Amazon. The cake came from H-E-B, and it was DELICIOUS! I had a specific budget, and I chose my items around that budget.

Food from the party:

Cracker jacks
Cotton candy
Lollipops
Corn dogs
Popcorn
Confetti sugar cookies
Fruit k-bobs
Birthday cake
Party favors: gumball machines and animal crackers for those who can’t have gum yet.

Tips for hosting a child’s party at your home: If you are hosting a birthday party at your home, I highly recommend going through your children’s closets and putting up items that have several pieces, or puzzles – where every piece is important. If there are any items that are special to your kids, I encourage you to put those away as well. No one wants a fight over a toy at a party!

Once you filter the bedrooms, go ahead and clear out any common areas too. This helps guests focus on the toys put out for the party specifically. We cleared out the play kitchen and art easel that we keep in our kitchen area.

All of our items were stored in our master bedroom with our pup. We knew it was temporary, and having toys in our room would also motivate us to put the toys back to their original location after the party.