Carnival Party: Invitations: Cut out face w/hat shape or wavy hair, out of construction paper or any color paper. (I used scraps around the house).When making them, take your piece of paper, any size, fold it in half.  Draw your clown face & either make funny hair on top of it or a hat. Cut around the drawing, leaving part of the fold part uncut so your card will open. Let the birthday child draw the eyes, nose, mouth, etc. Every card can be different.  On the inside, list the date, time, etc & add that each person coming can dress in their silliest, funniest clothes or clown costume. We put home made confetti (paper hole punches) in the cards for extra fun. Party time:1)play games such as pin the nose on the clown. I took a piece of cardboard & drew a big funny looking clown & let the birthday child color it in. We put a funny shape nose on it & made matching ones with numbers for each child. (We used tape instead of pins). 2)Guess the # of candy in a jar. We found sundae cups with different colors on them at the dollar store. We bought bags of gummies & jellybeans, tootsie rolls, etc & mixed them in the cups. We had the children guess how many pieces of candy was in each one. We made one for each child-once a person guessed correctly they got that cup & then stepped back until every child got one.3)The peanut race game. You need a smooth floor for this game. We broke into teams & gave each play a shelled peanut.  When told to go the first two team members rolled their peanut, with their nose, from the start to the finish. Each team person received a blow pop or tootsie roll pop after they finished. 4)face paint each other. We used water based poster paint or tempera. We made different colors & put them in baby food jar lids & used q-tips to decorate each other.(I made up a sheet of different designs to help kids choose how to make up their friend.)After the party, this can be cleaned off their face with a baby wipe. Afterwards, we had a parade of clowns all around the back yard & around the house while playing music off my kids CD ("the ants go marching one by one hur rah, hur rah" was our theme song, but we changed the word ants to clowns!) Food: I made confetti cupcakes. I made different colors of icing & had various sprinkle, tiny jelly beans, etc & let the kids decorate their own cupcakes faces. I also baked cake inside of ice cream cones-filling it to the brim. When the ice cream cone is upside down after baking, it was rounded like a face-the kids could choose to decorate this like a clown face & funny hat. Snacks were available throughout the party as I had bought Wal-Mart's brand of "kettle corn" & popped it right as guests arrived. I placed it in bright colored bowls all around the party area. Once the kids tried it, the ate it all (3 bags worth!).I also had shelled & unshelled peanuts. For their drink, I made Rainbow sherbet punch. Put an entire 1/2 gallon of rainbow sherbet in a punch or large bowl, scoop by scoop. Slowly pour 7-up, Sprite or ginger ale onto the ice cream. Some of the sherbet will melt, leaving an array of colorful foam. Goodie bags were made from white lunch bags with a hole punch & ribbon strung through it. We had things like bubbles, smiley face rings, pencils, "puzzle" games, play watches, etc.