We may have accidentally started a tradition. It started with our oldest’s 5th birthday, as he loves playing and making games. He is a huge fan of arcades, carnivals, fairs, etc. We were talking about themes, and I thought about a carnival, casually thinking, “Yeah, we could do a carnival birthday”. But then, as my mind does, I thought well Kyler loves ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ so what if we did a carnival inspired by the movie! And it all went uphill from there. I will make another post about that birthday, but I wanted to share our daughter’s birthday party that we just did a couple of weekends ago for her 5th. For her theme she wanted to do mermaid/under the sea. Let me tell you, this one was so fun!
I can easily say that I get carried away. I love planning birthday parties, and doing a themed carnival makes it even more fun! While we’re on that page though, I also cause some unnecessary stress on my husband and I ;). He’s a trooper, not only does he go along with my wild ideas, but he helps plan and make decorations, props, prizes, and more.
We decide on five games, which also means we have to figure out the prizes for each game (the number choice was purely coincidental). And me being the person I am I try my hardest to stick to the theme, which can be challenging. We made most of the decorations ourselves, and honestly sourced a lot of it from items we already had laying around.
The Games and Prizes
Mermaid Toss
The kids helped paint this one. We cut a hole where the tails curves, and we had mini sea animals to use to toss into it. This is similar to a corn hole game.
The prizes for this game were these super cute drawstring backpacks/bags. This worked out perfect to put all of the other prizes in that the kids could win from the other games.
We did shark bags for any boys that would be attending, or anyone that maybe just didn’t want a pink bag. And we also did mermaid bags for those who like mermaids. We got these from Amazon and they were very well priced.
Pin the Tail on the Mermaid
This one was just a poster from Amazon that came with tail and clam stickers, and a pair of blindfolds. We secured the poster to a foam poster board so it was more sturdy. The prizes were necklaces, some were clam shells and some were shark teeth. We also included mermaid keychains on this (mostly because these were an extra prize we had).
Octo Ring Toss
This was an Octopus Ring Toss. We had this octopus from a previous birthday/just summer toys. This may have been my favorite booth because of the prizes. This one was stuffed animals that we used a beach net to hold. We got the stuffed animals from many places. Some came from Amazon, some from Big Lots, Zurchers, and I even made a couple of manta rays myself. We also got a few from a local shop in town called Fin Fun. They make mermaid tails and shark fins, and have become so big they ship worldwide! I highly recommend checking out their website: https://www.finfunmermaid.com
Dart Toss
This game is to throw the weighted darts through the holes. Again we use stuffed animals and blow up toys that we already had to decorate it. The board was actually a prop we used from our son’s birthday carnival, so we were able to re-purpose it. And the prizes for this one were cute mini beach balls. I got two dozen for super cheap from Zurchers!
Gone Fishing
We already had the blow up pool and the ball pit balls, so we decided to make a fishing game out of it. We made cute little fish from pool noodles and made loops with zip ties. We then made some PVC pipe fishing poles with large ‘hooks’ to hook the zip tie loops on the fish. And then of course this just double as a fun pool the kids got to ‘swim’ in after playing the game.
Results
As I said above we made most of the decor ourselves. It was super fun and I always enjoy being creative. One thing I had a lot of fun with was making the ‘booths’ and the coral decorations to go on them. We colored about two packs of coffee filters with water color paints. After they dried we would stack a few together and secure them with some pipe cleaner. We also had green ones that we made sea weed with. The other coral and sea weed on the booths were made with pool noodles. It was late in the year, but we got lucky as Target had MANY pool noodles left from their summer stock. We not only used them for coral decor, but in the booths themselves as well. It was perfect to hang the prizes from. Additionally we were able to keep everything in theme! Although I suppose that wasn’t too difficult since mermaid and under the sea are fairly popular birthday themes. And since this was more of a family party, we included prizes for boys and girls. All in all it was a great time, and I can’t wait to do another carnival birthday party.
