Renaissance Carnival - 8th birthday Party  My daughter's birthday is October 30th, so it's always a challenge to have something not "Halloween" related. For her 8th birthday, we put together a Renaissance carnival. I used a popular greeting card program to do the invitations, placing a large tent on the front with the opening pulled back and "Enter for the Renaissance Carnival" in the opening. We invited her friends to come as princes, princesses, jesters, etc. We include a "ticket" inside to attend the carnival, which they trade for tickets to play the various games, when they arrive.  FOOD: We grilled chicken and beef kabobs, mac & cheese, corn dogs, veggie trays with spinach dip and a large seasonal fruit tray. We put together a party punch using sprite and several frozen fruit juice flavors for a champagne-colored punch (to resemble ale). The birthday cake featured a multi-colored tent with clowns, a prince and princess and a woodsy theme (I used some trees and small critters from a woodlands set at the cake decorating store). DECORATIONS and GAMES: We decorated our home with colorful streamers and balloons in red, yellow and blues and all of us dressed as ladies-in-waiting, princes, etc. (Really, anything fairy-tale oriented will do). I asked my father-in-law, who owns a really nice restored Ford 8N tractor, to bring his tractor and trailer to do a hayride (we actually used blankets instead of hay because of allergies). I hired this really neat magician, her name is Lady Sarah, and she dresses like a magician (Purple velvet long flowing dress) or a Princess. She also does the most fantastic face-painting and is really quite elaborate with the designs.  She kept the kids entertained while we set up booths for the GAMES (we used colorful tablecloths and placed balloons everywhere) - a craft table so the kids could decorate bags to hold their goodies, Olde Timey Tattoos, Candy Making (it's flavored sugar in long tubes or in decorative containers - really the hit of the party), and my daughter's favorite The Lollipop Game (I take a project board, place 100 holes in a 10x10 pattern and place dum-dum lollipops in them - then I color code the BACK of the stick with different highlighters - the kids get to pick so many lollipops - depending on the # of children - and the colors correspond to the number of prizes they can pull from the witches cauldron we call Wishful Thinking.) The witches cauldron - Wishful Thinking- we fill with prizes and make the kids put their hands through a black tablecloth to get their prizes from the Lollipop Game (we use a plastic witches cauldron and filled it with small prizes like marble mazes, finger cuffs, rings, and candy). We also have a popcorn relay race where the kids take large spoons of popcorn and transfer them to a bowl - first team to get all popcorn (including dropped ones) into the bowl wins prizes (I let them pick out of Wishful Thinking).  Lastly, they go on the hayride to calm down from all the excitement. Our neighborhood has horses so that's a nice distraction for them. At the tail end of the ride, I got my neighbors to stand in their driveways and throw candy into the trailer at the kids as they pass by (Halloween candy). The kids went nuts over this! We finally opened presents and as each child left, they were given paper crowns or plastic tiaras to take home (Dollar General store) and their choice of the balloons.  It helps when doing a party of this magnitude to have some helpful friends and family to run the booths and a cleanup crew. We had a blast, no one worked too hard and the kids couldn't wait to go back to school and tell the others who couldn't attend what fun they had!