This past weekend we had a family birthday party celebrating my sons turning four and seven. I think this is the first year we haven’t been able to have an outdoor party since it turned out to be a very rainy day.

For a couple of months I had been planning a carnival theme inspired by this article and also this amazing real-life circus birthday party. But as per usual I was scrambling a couple of days prior to the party to pull it all together! Luckily I had ordered some supplies ahead of time including clown noses, circus-themed tattoos, 260Q twisting balloons for making balloon animals, and a balloon pump.

I had also stumbled upon a bunch of carnival and circus fonts that are available for free, and I decided to use De Louisville for the invitation and party banner. For decorations I strung 75 small red, blue and yellow balloons across the dining room ceiling.

We had a BBQ with sausages and hotdogs and we also served popcorn in these fun cones I made. I had planned to make these ice cream cone cakes, but at 10:30 the night before the party I decided I was just too tired to try something new and so I made cupcakes using a variation of this muffin recipe (substituting applesauce for the mashed bananas) with sprinkles to go with the polka dot theme I had started with the invitations.

I had several carnival-inspired games planned but we just ended up doing a ball toss with holes cut in a cardboard box!

I found these instructions and video showing how to make balloon animals. My oldest son was thrilled about teaching his younger cousins how to twist the balloons, and they all had fun making their own animals–or swords which was popular with the boys!

Most of the time the kids just ran around chasing each other in the house so it got a little wild at times. I set up a tattoo chair and the kids really liked picking out their favorite tattoo and it helped calm things down for a little while at least.

For goodie bags for the kids, I bought these popcorn bags which we filled with a clown nose, some balloons, caramels and tattoos.

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