Big Top Circus

10:20 AM Angela Haythorpe 23 Comments

For my eldest daughter's 3rd birthday we did a Big Top Circus Theme. It was summertime so I thought I would make it an outdoor water party!! So fun!!

THE INVITATION:

I searched high and low for my original invitation but I COULD NOT find it for the life of me. So I recreated one to the best of my memory. I found a few links to invitations for sale that I really liked for those of you who don't know how to make invitations (BlissfulNestStudio and LollipopPrints).

THE DECOR:

As an outdoor party I decided to use 3 kiddie pools to look like a three-ring circus. The main colors I used were red and yellow. I popped a few extra colors in there to balance out a primary color look. I also decorated the inside of the gazebo with red and white streamers and hung a few stuffed animal monkeys from the top.

I had a kiddie slide that I bought on sale from Big W (a WalMart type store) for $15. It was pretty plain so I decided to paint the side looking like an elephant drinking out of the water.I just painted it grey added eyes and a smile and taped (with packing tape) ears I cut out from a grey foam sheet.

The other think I find almost CRUCIAL in every birthday party is CARDBOARD!! I went to my local white goods store and asked for left over Refrigerator boxes. They brought out a few for me and I brought them home. I painted one side of the boxes to make a Circus Train! I cut plate sized circles on the side so the kids could put their faces through the side and pretend to be the animals. I almost always try to have a place where we take a picture of all the guests together so we have one single photo to capture the day. The train served as the photo scene for this party.

Martha Stewart has some good ideas... And there are affordable decor options at The Oriental Trading Company.

THE FAVORS:

I bought popcorn style bags from Spotlight Craft Supply Store (Australia) but they have them at tons of places. From the Dollar Tree to The Oriental Trading Company. I gave out candy, hand held games, stickers and of course boxes of Animal Crackers which I had to have my family ship over from America. I had a cousin give out goldfish as the party favors as they won the different games at the party.

THE FOOD:

I really wanted circus type food but it was near impossible to find in the part of Australia I was in. I had to special order corn dogs for the Big Top type feel. We had fruit salad, popcorn and M&Ms. We also had Nutter Butters, Circus Peanuts, and Mother's Circus Animal Cookies sent over especially for the party.

THE CAKE:

Since my last cake attempt was a failure, I ended up going with Popsicles! It was summer so it worked perfectly and especially because it was an outdoor party.

I ended up buying a round piece of styrofoam and used yellow and red crepe paper streamer and glued them vertically along the side to look like tent stripes. To finish off the ends I glued blue crepe paper strip along the top and folded it over and glued it. Then I had a plastic 'Happy Birthday' candle holder for the top of cakes and I just stuck it into the styrofoam side. I also glues some foam animal shapes I had leftover from another craft I did ages ago.

We just stuck the popsicles in the top of the styrofoam and also the birthday candle. It was a hit.

GAMES:

There was definitely no shortage of things to do for this party. We had the 3 ring pools. One pool had a slide, the other had ball pit balls and the other had water guns. We had a Balance beam, an animal cage (withed stuffed animals), and we had a ring of fire... I mean ring of WATER! :)