Carnival party -- 3 year old.  For my daughter's June birthday, we had a good old fashioned carnival party in our backyard. For the invitation, I took a plain sheet of paper and made a mixed media collage with stamped carnival images such as cotton candy, a popcorn box, a carousel, a Ferris wheel, etc., a color photograph of my daughter, and some actual carnival tickets, the kind you can purchase in a large roll at a party supply store.  The text read "She's got a ticket to ride, and so do you at Julie's 3rd birthday carnival party!"  I made color Xeroxes of the sheet and presto, instant invitations. When each guest arrived, he or she was given tickets to use at the various carnival "booths": 1) "Snow White's Wishing Well Fishing" -- I had made a "wishing well" out of a large cardboard box, four tall mailing tubes, and flaps of another box for the roof. It was all put together using a hot glue gun. I painted the well to look like it was made of pink stones, and I wound "vines" of fake ivy and flowers around each of the mailing tube "poles."  The "roof" was covered with moss. I made a pulley system with a ribbon and attached a small bucket. The children could lower it down into the "well" and pull it back up with a prize in it.  They somehow could not see (or maybe they just ignored the fact) that the birthday girl's older sister was behind the well putting in the prize each time. (The older sister and her friends also manned a lemonade booth.)  2) "Blue Fairy Cotton Candy" -- My biggest splurge was a home cotton candy machine from a catalog (it cost $80 but years later we still use it to entertain on a rainy day.) We dyed the sugar blue with paste food coloring and the blue cotton candy got rave reviews from the kids.  3)  "Tinkerbell's Treasure Dig"-- I remembered a cardboard treasure box my mother had once received as a promotional item so I borrowed it and filled it with sand.  The kids could dig for small plastic figurines. They were thrilled to get their hands dirty (but not too dirty) and have something to show for it at the end.  4) "Mad Hatter's Creation Station" -- I think it is very important to have some kind of craft activity for kids this age, so I set up tables (which would later be used for serving the birthday cake) for hat decorating.  I had purchased inexpensive "straw boater" hats (the ones that look like old-fashioned carnival barker hats and are actually made of styrofoam) and put out an assortment of wide ribbon and adornments (large "confetti" shapes, etc.) and glue for the kids to decorate them with.)   5) As for carnival "rides" -- our swingset, treehouse and slide, and rocking horse kept the kids busy. 6) "The Amazing Singing Woman" The much-loved visiting music teacher at the children's pre-school is a professional children's singer and songwriter with a couple of CD's.  But because she had been out of the country for a while and needed to build her audiences back up, she agreed to come to the party and entertain the kids (and parents) for a nominal fee.  What a delightful "note" to end the carnival party on. The kids went home exhausted but happy with their prizes in paper Chinese food cartons stamped with the same images as on the party invitations. The booths themselves, with their signs (each had character illustrations) were really the decorations, but I hung colorful paper lanterns in summery sherbet colors in the trees. I also "planted" giant lollipops in the flower beds (something I had done another year for a Wizard of Oz party and it was so popular I repeated it.)  What I liked best about the party is that once all the set up was done, it was very casual and low-key and pleasant.  There was a good flow of traffic between the different "booths" and the variety of activities offered something for everyone -- even the adults.