I recently had a client ask me to do her son's 1st birthday party. She wanted a children's carnival inside her inlaws raquet ball court.
I decided on three primary carnival colors and ran with it. The raquet ball court was filled with games and tents made out of cardboard and table cloth rolls and baloons, within the color scheme. When the place was finally all set up the colors pulled everything together and created this wonderful flow throughout the room.
The kids enjoyed fresh popcorn, cotton candy, and snow cones. They loved picking out of a goody bag after each game they played. They ran around in there for hours all while listening to circus music playing through the speakers. But one of the best ideas I had for the whole day was the photo cage. Not a photo booth, and not a cutout of a circus clown's face, but a photo cage. I wanted a photo op where the whole family could participate. I saw a similar one at Disney and thought it would be perfect for this carnival. I painted and cutout cardboard to make it look like a train cage, like something you would see a circus train pulling (like in the movie Dumbo). I painted the words "Wild Animals" above it and was not even expecting some of the reactions we got in the photos. Everyone LOVED it! The kids, parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents, all got really into it. In the picture above are the birthday boy's grandparents taking time for their photo op. A perfect example of how much fun they had.
The whole thing ended up being the highlight of the day. The parents of the birthday boy even took photos of each family in the cage, had them printed into postcards, and sent them to the families as thank you cards.
Moral of the story: If you get them interacting, you'll keep them entertained!
