cirucs ticket booth

before...
after...

i finally finished the ticket booth for my boys upcoming circus party! it was originally a puppet theater...when i found it on clearance at target.com in january i immediately thought, "that would make a perfect ticket booth"!

i've been slowly painting it here and there over the past few months...come party day, i'm setting out little tables to the sides of the ticket booth. i'm going to put all the party favor boxes (with TICKETS inside) in the ticket window and on the tables.

circus banner and favors

here's the birthday banner i just finished for my boys' circus party. you can't really see the detailed paper, but it's all circus themed :)...

have you gone to a circus/carnival and played the goldfish toss game? you try and get a ping pong ball into at least one of a bunch of water filled glasses that are set out. if you do get one in, you win a goldfish..which is then put in a little clear bag for you to take home. so, these are my goldfish prizes for our little goldfish toss game! THEY'RE SOAP! i got so excited when i found them on tip junkie as an idea for a cute mermaid party gift favor...

i revised them a bit, and walla!

here's a quick description of how i made them..

i got glycerin soap and melted it in the microwave. added soap scent oil to make the soap smell good. poured the hot soap into clear favor bags. and then placed the bag in a bowl of ice water while holding a plastic goldfish in place with skewers. so fun, huh??!!

i tied cute little ribbons on them and a personalized circus tag i designed that says, 'kaden & gavin's circus birthday'...and here's my party favors. i made name tags in photoshop to look like tickets. i'm attaching the names to each box.

and just fyi...i'm going to give the favors out at the beginning of the party because they have things in them that the kids will need for the whole sha-bang... what's inside...

tickets (that they'll need for each carnival booth i'm going to have)

a circus scene sticker sheet

a circus animal notepad

a circus animal mask

a clown nose (that they'll put on to have a picture in a 'photo booth')

and a circus animal finger puppet...fun, fun, fun!

circus party: invitations

i've been planning my boys' circus party for months now. i'm so excited for it as time draws closer! i just finished the invites in photoshop. so here they are...i love how they turned out :). i'm going to hand deliver most of them & attach a barnum's animal cracker box to each one. i have a lot of other circus items i've been working on for the party that i'll post soon...

cupcake party: invitations

i've been playing around in photoshop a lot lately. first i'll show you the cupcake party invite i came up with. what do you think? it's not the final thing, just a go at it :).

totally awesome 80's party

my husband was born in 1980 so for the past few months i've been planning a "totally awesome" 80's birthday party to honor the year of his birth & years of his childhood. the party was a hit. thinking back to the 80's was hilarious! so here's his 'radical' night...

shown in the above pic: mr. t, mr. t, mr. t...i found a huge life size stand up of mr. t online. we used him as a photo op and backdrop. for drinks i had capri sun's (capri sun's were the bomb in the 80's...remember?) and water in plastic spiderman cups..oh, and you can't forget the neon straws :). scooby doo adorned my food table (we had pizza by the way), along with neon plates/napkins and old school comic books.here's the invitations that i sent out. i found these neon wallets on ot and just had to get them! i put the invite inside (also neon) along with an uno card (great 80's game). the invite read, "uno you wanna' be cool, right? so totally come to celebrate the year of ben's birth! it's a radical 80's birthday party! come ready to have a tubular time! don't give any bogus excuse! dress in your 80's getup and be the bombdigity!" i attached the recipients names to the wallets with an 80's friendship bracelet. they turned out awesome :). and this was the bithday cake...i brought back the rubik's cube baby! the cake took forever but was well worth it :). i even made the middle layer a neon swirl :).

ah, the days of cassette tapes!! i wanted to incorporate cassette tapes (as well as vhs tapes..which are shown below) since that's what was hip during the 80's. i painted them (neon colors of course) and hung them from the ceiling fan. it was a really fun decoration, i was actually pretty pround of myself :).

i purchased a bunch of candy that screamed '80's'...poprocks, bazooka gum with comic strips in each wrapper, flinstone candy sticks, tom & jerry candy, and scooby doo candy packs. all of it was in a spiderman bowl (spiderman was one of my husbands favorite shows when he was young by the way). you can also see slinky's in the background. i hung a bunch of them from the ceiling behind the cake table & above the bar. and there's one of the vhs tapes i was talking about..i painted them in neon colors as well :). oh, and you can also see the neon table cloths that i had all over..i used some as back drops and some as actual table cloths.

do you remember these glasses?! they were the COOLEST in the 80's! i was so happy when i found them online! i set them out for the guests to wear :).

i also set out neon glow bracelets (above in the spiderman cups)...

and here's a close up of the SLAP BRACELETS and 80's character pins!!! the neon slap bracelets were the best...and the pins were rainbow brite, my little pony, alf, karate kid, and she-ra/he-man! here's some of the party goers in their 'getup'...EVERYONE looked great!!! you can also see the authentic old school xmen poster i found online..and of course, our photo op, mr t :). i had our polaroid camera out for anyone who wanted a polaroid pic...we took a bunch of 'em with mr t and all the other 80's decor.

more of our 'totally awesome' guests :).

this is an inflatable boom box that i found on ebay...it has an ipod dock so it actually plays music (i had 80's music that i purchased on itunes playing on and off throughout the night). it was awesome!

i bought a used old school nintendo machine! does this say 80's or what?! we played pac-man and mario bros throughout the night. it brought back so many memories!

here's my make shift stage. one of the best parts of the night took place here..and it may not be what you think. poetry readings faded out in the 80's...but i decided to bring one back! i asked each guest to write a poem to ben/about ben to present to him at the party (this part was a surprise). IT WAS GREAT! everyone was SO creative!! some poems were hilarious and others very touching...all of them were SO clever. i got video of everyone reading the poems (no pics) so i need to upload one of the videos to post.

here's some more of the 80's decor. i decorated my whole upper bar with 80's memorabilia...spiderman books, connect four games, scooby doo snacks, whistles, gelly bracelets, glitter bracelets, friendship bracelets, koosh balls, uno cards, garbage pail kid cards, aqua net hairspray, slinky's, rainbow brite, transformers, and more...

i also had trivial pursuit totally 80's out on our coffee table for guests to play. some of the questions were a riot...

i found some old school looking t shirts at target for my boys to wear. they had 80's cartoon characters on them. they worked perfectly! here they are eating their pizza on the kitchen floor.

here's a closer look at some of the 80's stuff....gotta' love it!does anyone remember trapper keepers?! i found most of these things on ebay. i had a trapper keeper exactly like this one! and the alf luchbox and thermos...wowsers...now that was cool!

Here's the birthday guy and our two little guys as we were singing happy birthday.

rock on! here's one more polaroid for you all :). i bought inflatable rocker guitars that fit the theme.

i also played a tv trivia game..i downloaded a bunch of 80's tv theme songs (again, on itunes) like mash, muppets, carebears, hawaii 5 0, doogie howser, alf, stairway to heaven, love boat, and a lot more, and played them for guests..first one to guess the tv show got an 80's whistle keychain or a hulk paddle ball. it was a really fun game!

all in all it was a great party. my husband loved it. happy birthday babe!!!!

creative parties and showers

I just wanted to give a shout out to creative parties and showers! My car party was just featured on their site and I'm so happy about it :). If you're ever looking for awesome parties, or darling showers then here's the place you need to go! Thanks for featuring me Shannon!

80's party: invites

i'm having an 80's birthday party for my husband this month. he was born in 1980 so i decided to honor the year of his birth and the years of his childhood! these are the invites i came up with. they were so much fun. i was so excited when i found these neon wallets! 80's for sure! i found some 80's neon friendship bracelets that i wanted to incorporate as well...so i put them around the wallets to attach the recipients names.

here's what i put in them...an uno card (a total 80's game), and a neon envelope...

i found these little blank neon cards etc at target..they worked perfectly!

and here's what i printed for the inside of the little cards (pac man font of course!). i've had a lot of fun planning this upcoming party...i'm really excited. hopefully ben will like it!