I really loved putting Jack's County Fair Party together.
It seems that a lot of you out there loved it too.
I've had rather a lot of 'how did you make that' and 'where did you get those from' requests & emails so I thought I'd do a bit of a County Fair Style File.
Starting with the venue.
Winter in Canberra tends to limit outdoor venue options. I didn't want go down the typical play cafe route so I did some kids party venue research on the Internet and found the Farmyard Nursery...complete with glowing recommendations on parenting website forums. The fact that the next available booking was a month after Jack's actual birthday reinforced how popular the venue was and turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Having it at the end of winter meant warmer weather and lots of baby animals in the nursery. The venue cost was $250 for 10 children & 10 adults and included two staff, two hours of farmyard animal interaction and a fully kitted out kitchen/entertaining area to prepare and serve food & drinks. Win, win, win!
Next step...invitations.
Normally I hand make them but this time I found invitation inspiration on Etsy.
Jack's gorgeous Vintage County Fair printables were designed by the very talented Lora from Lora Lang Designs. I loved the invitations so much that I also ordered Cupcake Toppers, a Birthday Banner and Thank You tags. I love how printables give you the freedom to print as many as you want.
From there I jumped onto Pinterest for more ideas which I posted about here. So many fantastic images to glean creative County Fair food styling tips. Before buying anything else I settled on a colour scheme of red, white & blue. Having a colour scheme helped me decide what to buy and tied everything together beautifully on the day. I went back to Etsy and found these fabulous drink bottles at Pink Lemonade Party Supplies
and sweet vintage fairground style food trays from Cute Kids Food Box.
The striped straws, striped cups, polka dot cupcake cases, popcorn boxes, napkins, bunting & ribbon were from a two dollar store. The glass apocathery jar filled with Jaffas was one that I bought last year in a homewares store. The Little Big Company sells beautiful ones here.
I made the pinwheels and chicken silhouette props using carnival themed scrapbooking paper from Spotlight. The templates for these are from Good Housekeeping and Martha Stewart's websites here and here.
For more County Fair flair I placed recycled jam jars full of herbs & flowers from my garden and a basket full red apples amongst the party food.
Mmmmm...let's talk party food!
Being a small kidlets party I wanted to keep the food fairly simple. A menu made up of traditional carnival fare that little hands could manage and big taste buds would appreciate.
Jack's County Fair Menu
Strawberry & Blueberry mini punnets
Organic Sweet/Salty Popcorn
Mini pretzels and French Fries
Mini Donuts
Jelly Snakes, Jaffas & Chocolate Freckles
Chocolate & Vanilla Persian Fairy Floss in mini waffle cones
Mini Hotdogs
Mini Pulled Pork rolls with Southern Slaw
Milk, Juice, Ginger Beer, Tea & Coffee.
And cake...must have chocolate birthday cake!
The food was simple but the presentation was what gave it its wow factor! I picked up plenty of tips from all the gorgeous images on Pinterest.
A length of hessian served as a tablecloth and provided a great neutral base. Adding levels gave it visual interest...highest at the back, lowest at the front. Grouping and repetition also had great visual effect.
The cake was the focal piece. Just a plain chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream frosting...jazzed up with tiny paper bunting in the same carnival themed paper, tied to striped paper straws.
Recycling a cardboard gift box as the icecream stand, I covered a square of florists styrafoam with a blue polka dot napkin and using a skewer, punched a dozen holes and pushed in cake pop sticks. I then cut the tip off mini waffle cones, filled them with fairy floss and slid them onto the sticks. An easy but very cute way of displaying them.
And the little signs...cut from carnival scrapbooking paper and stuck to paddle pop sticks. Easy and practically ready made!
Normally games are high on the agenda but the kids were fully entertained with the animals.
The one 'game' that I set up was the carnival photo booth. To make it I bought a couple of metres of cheap cotton fabric in a bold red & white stripe. I hung it over the fence with some bunting and placed a jar of photo booth props on a chair. The kids got to pull funny faces while I snapped away with the camera.
You could easily design your own props but I used this template from In the Treehouse who's creative team are nothing short of amazing. I love, love, love their website! I also used an old pair of 3D glasses.
Last but not least...as a thank you to our friends and family I made some County Fair style party favours.
The little hessian sacks were quickly whipped up by sewing two small rectangles of hessian together on three sides. By cutting little slits along the top side with scissors, about one cm from the edge, I was able to thread through some grosgrain ribbon to brighten them up and used little wooden craft pegs and natural twine to attach the thank you tags.
Inside the sacks were farmyard themed stickers, party whistles, animal biscuits, chocolate frogs and little yellow rubber duckies. All found in two dollar stores and the supermarket. Everyone also received fairy floss to take home...strawberry for the kids and chocolate & vanilla Persian floss for the adults.
Sweet!
So, there you have it folks!
Hope that you find some helpful tips amongst my ramblings. Have fun!
xxx Em
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