Sam turned 2 on July 24th, and we were so sure that we would have finalized his adoption by then that we planned a birthday/adoption party for him. Of course, the 24th came and went and it wasn’t finalized but we decided to party anyway!
I decided on a circus carnival theme, since half the time I feel like I live in the circus with four kids! The theme was perfect for Sam who loves animals and the bright colors and games made it so much fun to plan!
Like all our parties, we had a budget and thanks to some savvy shopping and DIYing I came in under budget. We were able to use the church hall which was air conditioned – and since it was JULY I was so thankful for that! I chose a color scheme of red, blue, green and orange – which were the colors that the Dollar Store had for what we needed. They were perfect – vibrant just like our Sam! The tables were decorated with buckets from the dollar store with balloons inside, and I hung photos of Sam along the windows so everyone could see him from birth until age 2!
The games were set up outside – we had ball toss, match a duck, go fish and skee ball, as well as face painting and tattoos. The kids decorated their prize bags with their names and then got prizes as they made their way around the games. You can read all about the games here. Inside we had a kissing booth – a jar of Hersey’s kisses and the kids/adults had to guess how many were in the jar!
Sam’s favorite part was the ball pit! I took our swimming pool, drained it and then filled it with ball pit balls that I borrowed from my MIL and a friend. All the kids had a blast sliding down into the balls.
The kids had fun running around playing games while the adults were inside in the cool hall! Again, very thankful for the air conditioning!
The food menu was simple and fun too! We kept with the Circus Carnival theme and had hot dogs, baked beans, fruit salad, potato salad and chips. For snacks there were bags of popcorn, cups of animal cookies, fruit snacks and dumb bells (marshmallows and straws)
Dessert was a great cake from BJ’s – did you know they made cakes?! The half sheet cake above was half the price of what my grocery store wanted to charge me! I’m only getting cakes from BJs now. My MIL also made brownies and there wasn’t anything left on this table by the end of the party.
It was a fantastic party to celebrate this sweet little boy!!
