Welcome to Girl Land: V's Carnival, Mustache, & Strong Man Birthday Party

So it was 6 months ago (May), but better late than never! If you know my V, you'll know that she is quite the tomboy. I struggle with finding any theme that she finds acceptable. At some point, she pretty much always says, "Whatever, I don't care" AS LONG as it's not too girlie!

This year, we did a carnival theme-- aqua, black, red, and white, stripes and mustaches! Last year, she was all about the 'staches. So this worked.

We did a table runner of red and white striped wrapping paper (Party City) and Spritz brand (Target) mustache plates and red plates and striped aqua/white napkins. I served corn dogs in cute aqua plastic baskets with red/white checked wax paper sheets. For snacks, we had grapes, popcorn, soft pretzels with chive cream cheese for dipping, Swedish fish, cotton candy...

And I made these rootbeer float cupcakes!!! They turned out soooo good if I do say so myself. Got the idea from Pinterest of course.

It's really simple, and I'm ALL about simple. Mix a yellow cake mix as directed except substitute 1 cup of water with root beer & add one dram of root beer flavoring. I used to be able to only find this at Joann's or specialty candy or cake making shops, but Michael's has recently started carrying the candy flavoring.

Make your favorite buttercream icing recipe (this is my absolute favorite recipe from The Repressed Pastry Chef) & add 1 dram root beer flavoring. Top with root beer hard candy or whipped cream & cherry & paper stripey straw cut in half. If you are serving them right away, I prefer the whipped cream and cherry, but I knew these would be sitting out for a bit.

The stand came from Amazon.com (gotta love Prime). I made these labels on Photoshop. I got the strong man clip art online. The cotton candy really held up! I was a little worried, but I ordered it on Etsy from Candilicious Randolph. Perfect! I clipped them with colored clothespins onto a big strand of ribbon. Eh, not the classiest presentation, but still turned out cute.

I designed the water bottle labels to match the cotton candy and popcorn labels:

Activities were pretty lame, but I knew that they were probably going to be most interested in just playing. We did coloring pages and make your own frame kits from Oriental Trading. Ugh, never again. Those things are the worst. They probably just ended up in the trash anyways.

I did the runner again down the center of the table. In the center, I put this jar with tiny plastic top hats and clown noses. The chalkboard label on the jar said "Wear Me".

They also did a ring toss for fun and ran around like crazy people outside. For favors, I bought mustache favor bags on sale from World Market. I bought mini whoopie cushions, fake mustaches, and candy from Party City. I bought the circus themed rubber stampers from Oriental Trading, and these super cute pinback buttons from Distinct Designs Unlimited's Etsy Shop.