how i did it. dycen's party.

Many of my friends have asked me how I did Dycen's 1st Birthday Party. This post is for the people who were asking.

I had a vision of a small carnival for Dycen & all of his little friends.  Some of you know but most of you don't,  my father-in-law is a pastor of a church here in the town we live.  I am blessed to have access to his gymnasium.

We reserved the gym many months before. I wanted each child to feel like they were at a real carnival and had to pay for everything themselves.  My husband designed the 'fake' money.  He cut & pasted it all. It was done through Microsoft Publisher. We went to Staples and bought green paper with a coupon we had from purchasing another item the week before. The paper came to $4. So simple. He put 12 little 'dollars' on one page and one afternoon, over chocolate milk, I cut them out. I cut until the scissor was indented on my finger. So worth it. 

I wanted to have a popcorn & cotton candy machine but that was not in my budget.  I wanted to have a big party but I wanted it to be affordable. I found pretty large bags of cotton candy at the dollar store.  I knew the children didn't need all that was in the bag. The day before the party, I opened each bag and separated the cotton candy into 4 different small bags.  So yes, that makes each bag I did for the kids cost 25 cents. 

I was talking with my girlfriend about popping my own popcorn because I couldn't afford a popcorn machine when she quickly said that the daycare she ran had so many small popcorn bags that I shouldn't buy any. She could give me as many as I needed. YES! Score!!! I asked her to hold 40 aside for me. Thanks Gina! I bought ONE box of popcorn, I believe it was $6 and we popped the popcorn before all the kiddos arrived and stuffed the bags. 

We had a tattoo table which the older kids LOVED. I bought 3 packs of 35 tattoos. I spent $1 on each of them. These were also purchased from the dollar store. The table cost me a total of $3!! I still have tons left over and I use them for rewards & treats. Works great!

The lollipop mountain was neat. I purchased 5 bags of blow pops at $1 each. Each bag had 15 blow pops in them.  The church had the mountain.  We colored the bottom of 5 random lollipops. If one of those were pulled the kids received a prize.  All prizes were $1 and under.  They were all purchased at the $1 aisle at Target or the dollar store.  They ranged from small footballs to coloring books to spider man cups to Elmo books and everything in between. 

I had banners made for each game that was played. The banners were all donated by a wonderful guest of mine at Longhorn.  The banners were made in all vinyl and can be used for many years to come! 

All banners looked like this in a variation of colors. 

The face painter was the biggest hit of all! I found her through a friend and she was the sweetest. She didn't charge me a dime. A nice tip was definitely necessary. 

The church owns the moon bounce. It's always the center of fun! 

If you have any other questions, don't hesitate to ask. 


oxox, jess