J's Carnival Birthday Party

As his birthday approached, J has been complaining about being old (eye roll so hard I sprain my eye).

I decided to throw him a surprise carnival birthday party. Because what better way to feel like a kid again than playing games?

He totally suspected. I told him I was making the games for my sister's boys' school. He was suspicious. When I had to buy food for over 30 people, he started asking questions.

None of your business J.

I combed Pinterest looking for ideas. When I was at Kristi's house helping her build a sofa table (blog here) and Jett was over playing with his cars, she made him a track for his cars.

Ummm, that's a pretty brilliant car racing game. I took the wood home so I could nail it together.

It was big trash pick up time in her neighborhood. One neighbor had a pretty big pile so I was going through, looking for boxes and wood. The neighbor came out and asked what I was looking for. I told him I was making carnival games. 

He gave me a cart:

And cornhole!!

Along with a bunch of other random stuff.

I felt bad. The cart and corn hole were pretty awesome. I have been looking for a good corn hole deal; those boards are $80. He told me he needed to get rid of the stuff. His garage was packed full, so I decided I would help him out. 

I just had to add legs to corn hole.

Clamped on the outside to make it easier drilling the hole.

And then I made myself some bean bags and I was set. The corn hole game is a bit warped, which made me feel less bad about taking it for free. But no one at the party noticed.

I really wanted a top canopy for the cart. My brilliant sister Kristi came to the rescue again.

I got this piece of foam from the neighbor guy. I was originally thinking I would cut holes and make a game. But Kristi cut it in half, secured it to the cart....

...and we had a canopy.

I went to Lowe's and bought cheap plumbing for the rings for my ring toss game.

Kristi helped me tape them together.

Then I drank a bunch of soda and built a box to hold the bottles.

I knew I wanted to make a frisbee toss game.

At the same time I started nailing the race track together.

You can see the race track and my partially finished frisbee challenge game. 

To get the frisbee challenge game to stand up, I made it a stand and connected it with rope.

I pulled the tape covered rope through with pliers.

Then I moved onto my ball toss game. 

I used a plastic pallet the neighbor gave me and some dollar store containers. I started out using bolts.

Yeah that wasn't going to work. Hellooooo holes way too big.

So I switched to zip ties. This carnival wasn't going for class, it was going for cheap, mmmkay? 

I tried to make a nerf game. I borrowed this clothes rack from my sister and had PVC pipe in the garage that would slide across the top piece. I cut pieces of PVC pipe, connected a piece of wood to the PVC pipe and threaded it through. The wood was too heavy to spin. I tried thinner wood. It still wasn't working. Luckily my sister had a nerf game I could borrow and I gave up on trying to built this.

And then as if she hadn't helped me enough, she helped me with the ping pong game.

It was a lot of work, but on Saturday I was ready.

The ring toss

The ball toss

The frisbee challenge

Corn hole

Ping pong toss

The car race (which is held up by another random thing the neighbor guy gave me, after Kristi took it apart to fit the size I needed).

The can knock down and the nerf game (which was later moved away from the window...good call Dad)

And my super fabulous cart that held the chips and popcorn.

Another thing I am proud of, is I made the cupcakes by myself.

I had to google what oil to use because the box just says "oil" it doesn't say which kind.

Then I had to google how far to fill the cupcake cups.

Not to brag, but I got some compliments and several people took some home. Not too shabby for someone who doesn't kitchen.

I made vanilla (first batch, in case I screwed up it was my least favorite), chocolate, and confetti (we only had vanilla left over).

Cheese and cracker platter

Fruit and fruit dip

We also grilled hamburgers and hot dogs. If anyone is curious, we've finally found the correct amount of food. 24 hamburgers, 24 hotdogs, big Costco package of strawberries, one honeydew melon, eight apples, four packages of raspberries, double serving of fruit dip, chips, cheese and cracker platter,  whole Costco case of water and 15 cans of soda. Feeds 34 people.

That fruit dip is a jar of marshmallow whip and a package of cream cheese. Make sure the cream cheese is room temperature and mix together. Everyone was raving about it. I probably could have tripled it instead of just doubled. 

The party was a lot of fun. My feet hurt so bad by the end of the day.

I had tested the can knock down before hand, adding sand. My nephews were laughing at my "weak" attempts (I posted it to snapchat). I decided it was too heavy and took the sand out. They wanted to add it back in. Made it more difficult, so the guys were flexing their muscles.

And then it was truly a carnival game, doing weird things like only knocking out one bottom can.

There was also impromptu Jenga in the front room. And Xbox in J's game room.

It was a good party. But I am so relieved it's over. I'm trying to decide what to do with my free time.

One thing I am proud of is how little money I spent building the games. I had a lot of the items. I did buy a few things, but mostly it was repurposed, borrowed, or provided by Kristi's neighbor.