For Evelyn’s 6th birthday, she requested to have a “Greatest Showman” themed party. It only made sense since she has constantly watched that movie at least a few times a week for the last year! She always gets up and sings and dances to all the songs and thankfully – for us (the grown-ups) it is actually a great movie! We listen to the soundtrack in the car all the time so I was excited to take this theme and really do it up this year.
The past year (almost 2 now) with covid, we had missed a lot of big celebrations, hadn’t seen a lot of friends, just like everyone else, so I felt it was as good an excuse as any to do a big (outside) party this year. The weather had other plans though and really made us scramble to pull it off – but thankfully, the tornado warnings held off until the end of the party! Oy. We have really bad luck with planning outdoor parties during storms!!
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The only specific request E had was that she wanted to wear a ringmaster costume and perform her dance to the song, “The Greatest Show”. She LOVES the Panic at the Disco version! I found an adorable ringmaster dress on Etsy. We paired it with this top hat from Amazon and found a dance cane at Party City that Daddy modified to be kid sized. She has a flair for the dramatic and didn’t hold back on her showman poses. We might re-purpose this costume with a jacket for Halloween!
Last minute we decided we had to set up the party in the garage since the forecast was not looking good and our backyard was pretty flooded from the recent rains. Our house is tiny and there is no way we could have all the people we invited inside the house safely. So, I ran to Party City and grabbed rolls of plastic table covering that we hung from the garage ceiling to hide all of our garage storage. It actually made it look really cool and I thought it resembled a circus tent pretty well, which was an added bonus (they were out of white so gold had to do)!
We set up as much as we could the night before but cleaning the garage (the before pictures are terrifying!!) and hanging the plastic was a big last minute undertaking! The circus scene turned out great though and I was glad I didn’t have to worry about the rain and all the decorations.
We set up the food inside the garage, complete with cotton candy, popcorn, and a snow cone machine. I found these awesome Greatest Showman prints on Amazon and put them in dollar store frames. The circus animals with party hats we found in the Target Dollar Spot were probably my favorite little touch. We of course had to have Barnum Animal Cracker boxes and I tied a “Thank You!” tag to the boxes as favors. The cake topper came from Etsy and is a great little keepsake.
We also had my mom doing face painting, which was fun! She drew lots of fun options for the kids to choose from.
I planned a bunch of carnival games to entertain the kids. This set-up sadly became the greatest victim to the wind and weather and of course it’s the one I spent the most time planning. But the kids still had a blast! We handed out tickets when they played the games and they exchanged the tickets at the prize booth for a little make your own goodie bag type of deal. It was a big hit. The kids loved picking out prizes. We thought about setting all the games up again on a nice night and having a carnival game night with friends!
Games included:
Fish Bowl Bonanza – Throw as many ping pong balls as you can into the “fish bowls”
Tin Can Crash – Try to knock over all the cans with either a ball or bean bag
Lucky Ducky – Find two matching rubber duckies in the pool
Bean Bag Toss – Got this one at Party City
Ring Toss – I got a few different versions from Amazon. The bottles were hard!
We had a great time celebrating with everyone despite the hot, muggy, stormy weather! The rain held off for most of the time and the sun even made an appearance for a few minutes! E had lots of her friends there from kindergarten and even from her old daycare. It was so nice to get that chance to be with everyone and watch the kids run wild! It’s definitely a party we will all remember!
It is fun for me to plan parties like this – I love all those little details – but whew! I need a whole team next time to execute my ideas! And preferably no tornados!! We’ll probably plan for an indoor party somewhere next year haha! Can’t believe my big girl is SIX!!
