Graduation Carnival Party!

 Graduation Party...Carnival Style!!!

 

My son graduated Kindergarten!  What a huge milestone for us!  He has been at the same learning center since he was 4 months old and we are going to miss it there so much!  I wanted to throw him a party so that he could have a great time with all of his wonderful friends.  Time to celebrate what he has accomplished in the past 5 1/2 years!  So happy for him and yet have a tear in my eye because my baby is growing up and I will no longer have him to take with me in the morning and pick up at the end of the day.  Oh they grow up so fast!

 

I have been wanting to throw a "carnival" party for his birthday for a while and he has always chosen other themes of his interest so this was my chance to have my fun! 

 

What is a carnival without games???

Spin Art was an absolute hit! I found a battery operated one at AC Moore and used one of their awesome 50% off coupons to get it at a great price!  The artist got to wear an art smock and goggles for effect!  We a hung wash line around the trees to hang and display all the cool artwork! 

 

 

Matching ducks was tons of fun!  These ducks I found on amazon and they worked great!  They had pre-printed numbers on the bottom for the kids to match them up!



I was able to use a lot of items that we had at home already.  Such as Bean Bag sets, cones my son had to play with and diving rings for the pool, baskets from the house and some wiffle balls.  A sticky target and ball set that we had and my husband's putting green. 

 

Ping pong ball toss and pin drop which I used some old ball jars that I had.  And I made a penny pitch on a piece of wood we had in our basement. :)

 



My two favorite games were sling shot and spray away!  For sling shot I found these great water play sling shots and they knocked cups off of the ladder.  Spray away was made with foam blocks wrapped in colorful duct tape.  Golf tees held ping pong balls that were knocked off by squirting them off with water.  We also played "hoops".

 

Some other highlights were the photo booth props.  We all enjoyed wearing them around.  I used wrapping paper on a wooden board and then an old cd rack to display the props.  Tattoos, Balloon Animals, and a "Fortune Teller".  I found great decorations at Party City as well as a balloon kit.  Amazon had kid friendly fortune cookies, the fortunes inside were great for kids! 

 I was able to raid the house of all dress up items and picked up a few at the dollar store also!  Old Halloween costumes also came in handy!

Another awesome mom helped twist balloon animals!

Prizes!!!!!!

 

 

 The kids earned tickets every time they played a new game and turned them in for prizes at the end of the party! 

 





 

Food!

 

Carnival Food is the BEST!  We had hot dogs, hamburgers, and also a nacho/taco bar.  Popcorn and soft pretzels.  Along with some other great picnic food!  We all had a great time and I would love to do it all over again!  I found great paper hot dog holders at target, oriental trading had soft pretzel bags, and our local Christmas Tree Shop had nacho trays and little popcorn holders!  Perfect finds!

 

 

Painting a Pumpkin

Painting a Pumpkin

I was out picking up some produce at the local little store that has discount produce and they had a bunch of pumpkins for $1.  I couldn't pass up the opportunity to use them to decorate my home for fall and I wanted to paint it.  But how?  Do I do the same thing I've done before and paint a face on the pumpkin?

Nah....so this is what I did.....

How would you paint your pumpkin?

Teacher Appreciation Gifts: A little Relaxation in a Bag

Teachers work hard everyday with our children and they deserve some time to relax too!  They deal with tantrums and still love and care for our children, filling their heads with as much information as they can.  Kameron and I made up these little bags, made our own soap and bath salts for some much deserved R&R!

We started with a kit from AC Moore to make your own soap.  We broke up the soap as directed and melted it in the good old microwave.  Next we added the ground up apricot seed for exfoliation and some herbal, vanilla, and orange scent to make it smell sooooo yummy!

After pouring the soap into the molds we let it sit overnight and then came time to dress it up.  We used a brown paper lunch bag to wrap the soap with scrapbook adhesive to hold it all together, we wrapped it like a package then added some decorative paper around it and some raffia.

The other part of our bag included bath salts.  We poured our bath salts that you can get at AC Moore into our bowl.  Next added some dried lavender flowers and a mixture of the same oils to create a similar scent to the soap.  Then Kameron mixed it all up and spooned it into individual sachet bags.

  

Now to package it all up!  I used a plain old brown paper lunch bag, some raffia and paper crafting to spruce it up and present it.  A soap and two sachets were in each bag.  Hopefully you can share this gift with someone special too!