My son celebrated his second birthday with a carnival theme.   This was a party that cousins of all ages attended and aunts, uncles and grandparents as well.    I first sent out invitations off the computer with a picture of my son looking like he was driving a rollercoaster. I made them up as flyers (looking like an advertisement for a neighborhood carnival) and wrote a little poem on it about my son and how his two years so far have been like a carnival ride with the ups and downs of his moods going from age one to age two. It was personal and very descriptive of his personality.  His life was like a carnival ride and how fun it was. We then had red, white and blue banners draped all through the yard (it was a September birthday) and I set up booths for games.  I had ordered through a novelty magazine tons of little prizes that were in bulk as carnival vendors would order. (you could also locate such things at the dollar store). The games consisted of stacking old soup cans (labels peeled) and having the children have 3 turns to try to knock down the cans with a bean bag.  Other games were old coffee cans (spray painted vibrant colors) and used like bozo buckets for the kids to try to toss golf balls in. Plastic bowling pins, ring stacker, and pin the nose on the clown were other of many games. Every child won a prize and I had decorated large paper grocery bags with handles as their party favor bags to store all their prizes in. We then had a cotton candy booth were all I did was purchase cotton candy and display them for the kids to pick up.  That was a big hit with the children. We had different food and beverage booths where the children and adults could get anything from any booth. There were hotdog and brat booths, chip booths, pop booths and ice-cream booths. After dinner the kids unwinded by playing on all our little tikes toys which I cluttered together to make it look like a carnival. The kids had to give tickets to an adult to play on the toys (teeter totter, swing, etc). Then there was a clown piñata and our cake was the best! I just made a very large sheet cake (twice) and filled it with ice-cream. I decorated it with green icing (to look like a lawn) and I took a ferris wheel off of one of my children's carnival toys in the playroom and I put that right on the cake. I also put a musical rotating birthday plate on top of the cake and made a carousel with straws and a coffee filter that I colored.  It rotated with my sons little plastic animals (horses, lions, etc)as the carousel horses that the children would normally sit on. I then just took lots of their little plastic people (that you get in McDonald's happy meals and etc.)and put them all around the extra spaces on the cake to look like a crowded carnival.  It was a VERY LARGE CAKE, but awesome and related to the theme. The party went until dawn and we blew off some fireworks, the older kids had sparklers and all had glow in the dark necklaces. IT WAS A LOT OF FUN AND ALL DECORATION AND GAMES WERE BASICALLY RECYCLED ITEMS!!!!!