We had a double party for my daugher and niece and they love to go to the county fairs. So I decided to have a carnival party. This party took about three months in planning. For the invitations, I used print shop and found clowns and then croped the girls faces and placed them over the clowns. in the inside left of the invitations I said, Come One Come all to the big top for tara and Lexies birthday. And on the right side i Put what we were having snow cones, cotton candy, popcorn, candy and carmel apples, Face painting, Games, and prizes. and made a coupon saying redeem this at the ticket booth for your 50 tikets. For the decorations I bought a lot of red and white plastic table cloths and against our brick wall in our patio area, hung them up alternating red and white to make it look like a carnival big top. We then put up our extra large canopies so that it felt like you were inside a tent. For the games i made a ticket booth out of ply wood and 2x4s, painted it red and white and painted get your tickets here." I also provided all young guests with big gift bags (from the dollar store) for their prizes with the 50 tickets inside each of the bags. For the games which I made all of them by hand with some help from hubby I made a tic tac toe game made out of 4x4 and plywood crazy cans made out of plywood and painted crazy cans (you have 3 cans placed on a pedastal and you try to knock them down with a ball) Plinko made out of plywood and lots of nails and painting sm md or lg prize in the bottom slots. A ring toss game (drink up you need lots of glass bottles I used beer bottles for this game and i bought shower rings for the rings.)Penny toss had an old table and painted the table and painted a rainbow and inside the colors place sm md or lg prize in it Grab a duck (buy a sm plastic kids pool and buy sm and lg rubber duckys and on the bottom of the duck place SML and then buy a small net such as an inscet catching net. A basket ball toss game (make two baskets and win a prize). All games consisted of needed two to three tickets and I made signs for each game with the name of the game and how many tickets you needed to play. I also had a table to serve as a concession stand there guests could reedem tickets for various snacks (cotton candy candy apples carmel apples boxed animal crackers oversized lollipops popcorn etc.) for one ticket. I also had a booth for face painting for one ticket. For food we also tried to have food that you would find at a carnival such as french bread pizza nachos hot dogs corn dogs hamburgers etc. All prizes for the carnival games were purchased from the dollar store depending how many kids you plan on inviting is the amount of prizes you need we used a rule 1 prize per kid per station. Our bill was big we purchased about 300 dollars worth of toys from the dollar store. Every child left with their bags busting at the seams and with big smiles! For the cake we had it custom made at a local bakery it was a three tier cake in primary colors with a carousel as the cake topper and cupcakes also in priamry colors placed around at the bottom with the cake (the cost for cake was $60 and cupcakes were $25 for 2 dozen). All of our family and friends told me it was "the party of the year" and they never had so much fun at a kids party before. Oh I almost forgot for my "carnies" I recruited various family members to run the game booths ticket booth and concession stand while me and my sister and our husbands prepared all the food. Needless to say this party a little pricey total estimated cost for about 100 guests was $800 dollars which me and my sister split equally. But this party is still talked about and its been almost a year in march. Have fun planning this party me and my sis did.  "