We had a carnival party on June 30th for my daughters 6th birthday. I had to start this in January to get it finished. I made the invitations to look like popcorn bags. I made the front with white cardstock paper that I made to narrow down slightly towards the bottom and them I folded back the sides slightly. I then used a red marker and ruler to draw the lines on each one. I then cut the top with the patterned scissors to give it the special jagged design. I made the popcorn, delicious crisp, and the fresh words on the computer. I cut out the fresh and the delicious crisp words in a rectangular shape and the popcorn in bigger font and cut it in a circle shape. I placed then on the front in the way a movie popcorn bag would look. You can get pictures of popcorn boxes/bags on the internet to compare. I attached a white cardstock piece to the back and glued the sides together and the bottom. You should have only the top open like a pocket. Then I got a yellow piece of paper that tapers like the front of the invitation does. I cut the top to look like popcorn shapes(rounded cuts) and I slipped it down into the pocket. It should not go all the way to the bottom of the pocket. The yellow paper should slightly stick out of the top to look like popcorn inside the popcorn bag. The guest was able to pull out the yellow paper with the info on it. For the games, we had to move everything to our 3 car garage because of rain. I got a lot of boxes from an appliance store in the beginning. I painted the picture of the photo standee(magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat) that pottery barn sells onto a refrigerator box. I purchased a fun mirror from carnival mirror that was about $24 fo a large one and I attached it to another refrigerator box. I painted and cut out a ticket booth that I copied from the Shindigz website. I purchased circus music off of the internet to play while the kids were in the midway. I rented a popcorn and sno-cone machine and I bought a carnival style hot dog machine from JC Penney($39). I purchased pre-packaged cotton candy and we had drinks. All of the concessions were purchased with tickets that the kids got when they walked in. Schoolcarnivals.com is a good resource for games. I had 10 midway games set up in a horseshoe pattern in the 2 car garage. 1. Clown toss that I made from wood but you can paint a clown onto foam board as well. 2. I took a 2x2 piece if plywood(got this from a construction site)and I painted a target onto it with primary colors. This became the penny pitch game. 3. I used 32 water bottles and then a squeezed paint inside and let my daughter shake them to make it look colorful. I glued then to foam board(bottom down) to make a ring toss. I used hard plastic bracelets as the rings that are 1.99 for 12 at Party City. 4. I used a large cork board that I got at Wal-mart for $6 and then I purchased darts and balloons from Oriental Trading. I attached the ballons with push pins to the board and this was the dart throw. 5. I cut one side of a dryer box(so it can stand by itself) and painted it to look like water. I had my daughter put fish stickers on the front and then I taped string onto a dowel with a clothspin on the bottom, This was the fish game. 6. I used 6 old cans. 3 larger ones on the bottom and then wrapped and glued colored foam around the cans. The foam gave the cans enough weight for a challenge. 7. I used a basketball goal(little tikes) and then I set up a washer box around it so that the ball would not bounce everywhere. 8. I used a box/tray that you get when you buy a large quantity of bagged chips at Costco or Sam's. I put hot glue into all the openings and then filled it with one bag of play sand from Home Depot. I got 10 dinosaurs and numbered then 1,2 or 3 then I stuffed then into the sand and covered them. 9. I bought 1 dozen ducks, numbered them, and put them into a small pool with water. You can use a small bird bath also as long as it will not fall over. 10. I got a hoola hoop and then I found a box that the hoola hoop would fit perfectly over. You can paint the box but I did not. This was the Hoopla game. I seperated all the games with streamers of creap paper from the ceiling to the table. This gave each game a seperate space without a lot of work. I bought all of the prizes from Dollar Tree, Wal-mart, Oriental Trading, Rebecca's(an actual store that has a huge amount of cool stuff and its on the web) and I found cool stuff at Pier 1 Kids store. For the cake/cupcakes, I glued a styrofoam bowl to the center of a cake board and then I put 20 skewer sticks into the foam bowl.(I colored them yellow by shaking then in a bag of yellow paint) I frosted half of a cupcake and then put M&M's at the seperation for decoration. I placed all of the cupcakes at each end of the skewer and then I cut out and taped a triangle shape from paper that ran from the bowl to the bottom of the board edge. The end result looked like a ferris wheel. I made more cupcakes that were just colors for extras. We rented a bounce house also for extra fun. The kids got 90 minutes in the midway/concessions/bounce house. We ate cupcakes and opened presents for the other 60 minutes. We had a total of 31 people and everyone has a super great time.