COVID-19 has really changed plans in 2020 for most people. It wasn’t how anyone envisioned their Summer plans, including us. As I’ve mentioned before, we are very active people. We go to every festival, circus, carnival and fair that we can. But this Summer, all festivities were cancelled. My daughter expressed her sadness at missing these events, so I promised to create one giant big carnival event before we started our new homeschooling adventure.

As with everything I do, I had to get creative, resourceful, and work with a tight budget. I knew we had a bunch of things we could use already around the house. I also planned to make a Dollar Tree run for cheap prizes, games and snacks. I had a few Amazon boxes stacked up that I knew I could repurpose and create with. Lastly, I always search my local free groups for things to have and borrow. It came together perfectly, minus the heat of a Georgia Summer.

So step right up, and come see our Carnival Day, 2020!

We set up a little canopy for food outside of my parent’s garage to help with shade. My parents had an old Nostalgia popcorn machine that wasn’t working but worked perfectly for holding popcorn and for looks. I was fortunate to have been gifted a big box of decorations from two families through a free gifting page. It included the banners and tablecloths and so much more. I had plenty of balloons left from old parties and celebrations as well.

I had a fun Ferris wheel snack display and big top circus display left from my daughter’s Coraline themed party last year. I didn’t really have much to put on it so it was more for looks. Part of the free party supplies were lots of carnival themed food holders for peanuts, pickles, hotdogs and popcorn! I also snagged some animal crackers and cotton candy at Dollar Tree.

My mom has a small drink dispenser that we used to throw in some Turkey Hill lemonade and we were lucky to find a family that allowed us to borrow a Nostalgia Snow Cone machine. We only had to purchase some snow cone cups and syrups. I also made a few syrups at home including root beer, sour lemon, blue coconut, and sour raspberry. Flavors purchased were, blue raspberry, cherry and cotton candy.

This was our little entry way leading to the carnival area in the back yard. It also worked perfectly for our sack race.

I made a sign with my daughter to look like an old fashioned sign at a carnival. We used paper towel rolls and cut up cardboard boxes. I found some red stick-on rhinestones at Dollar Tree that really helped make it special. It did suffer a little wear and tear though…

We created a ticket booth with another big box. I had high hopes for it when we cut up some boxes and I glued a whole canopy over hang to it. But it just didn’t hold up. Oh well! I still cut a slit in it to feed tickets through. I ended up buying the tickets for around $4 on Amazon, I think. Some Dollar Trees have them, but the one I went to did not.

The sack race sacks were all given as a part of the free party supplies from another family. My daughter had so much fun jumping up and down the yard with these.

We of course needed a photo op area to document this day! I’m definitely no artist, so I just quickly sketched out a picture of a clown and a strongest person. I decided to make it a female because, women are strong too, especially moms.

What’s a carnival without prizes?! I received a KidKraft food stand for free this past week off a free exchange page. It only needed a screw. It worked perfectly for our prize booth. I grabbed a bunch of Dollar Tree trinkets to add to our prize collection. I grabbed things like ring pops, toy whistles and planes, light up swords, slinky, and a stuffed animal.

I set up a little “Funhouse” by taking out all of our ball pits, plastic balls and tents. My son loved going in and out of the tunnel. It also kept him busy while I cleaned up.

I created a fun water squirter game to be similar to the ones at the fairs. This one, you make a hole in a plastic cup and put a string through it. I had all the supplies already. You can use any kind of water squirter and it will move the cups when you hit it. My daughter liked this game the best.

The box of supplies that were gifted to us had a ton of small red rings. I really wanted to do a traditional ring toss game but I didn’t have any glass bottles that would work. So I took one for the team and drank 6 Jarritos sodas in 3 days. Ok, my daughter did help me a little, but we aren’t really soda people. Thankfully, those sodas are like $1 a piece, so I didn’t spend much. I decorated the box with some rope I had leftover.

My daughter has always loved the balloon pop game at any carnival we’ve gone to. And man, they always con you into spending waaaay more money for the tiniest toy. I recreated this game by taking a flat piece of cardboard and painted it. The key is to poke holes to stick the balloon through where the knot can hold it in place. We had a few nice darts sitting in the garage that were never even opened before. We were able to play several times and never spent any money AND chose the prize of our liking too!

The duck game is popular one, especially with little kids. It’s a guaranteed toy and easy for any child. We had a few random ducks already at the house, but I also found 3 bags of little ducks at Dollar Tree to use. Unfortunately, most rubber ducks don’t float upright in water…. I wrote some “X”’s and numbers on the bottoms of each one to show how many prizes to win. My little guy loves rubber duckies, but he wanted nothing to do with them that day. Isn’t that always how things work?!

I was gifted a nice little Skee Ball game on the local buy nothing group page. I feel like Skee Ball is a common game that you see at fairs and carnivals. It came with 5 wooden balls and I placed them in a Dollar Tree container that I had purchased for school supplies. It reminded me of the long tube that the balls come down on when you play.

Along with the rings, the free box of supplies also contained a ton of ping pong balls. So we had to make the fish bowl game. I had a bunch of perfect glass fish bowls to use but they were all stuck in the back of my storage unit. Instead, I found a few random ones at my mom’s house. We don’t need any more pets and my mom would kill me, so no fish were actually used.

About a week or so before our carnival, I had seen someone selling a Step2 Roller Coaster Toy in amazing condition for less than half retail price. I jumped on it quickly and we’ve been playing with it ever since. It’s gotten a little dirty since then, but it worked great for a ride at our carnival!! If you notice, I also looked up YouTube videos on how to make balloon animals and shapes with a few of the old balloons I had left over.

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My favorite thing at any carnival is the food! We made sure to follow tradition and have corn dogs, hot dogs, cotton candy, snow cones and of course funnel cake. My mom already had funnel cake mix and we had corn dogs left from my daughter’s birthday party. As I mentioned before, cotton candy was from Dollar Tree and I purchased and made some snow cone syrups.

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Sometimes it’s the small things that really make you think of a carnival. I always think about the light up toys that line the midway as the sun starts to set. We always got souvenirs that lit up when we visited our grandparents at the Circus as kids. I managed to find the last two light up swords at Dollar Tree! Perfect to add to the end of our carnival evening. I also found those light up sling shot toys that fly high and slowly spin down. Last but definitely not least, we needed some face paint. My daughter has recently really gotten into getting her face painted. I had some leftover from Halloween as well as her birthday party.

In the end, we spent way less money than we would have spent going to just one carnival this year. See, kids don’t really care when you end up using the tacky bright blue tape all over the decorations, measure things out perfectly, or when you don’t take a perfect picture to post. They really only care about these imperfect special moments that they will cherish for years.