Phipps County Fair

Sawyer turned FIVE a few weeks ago and she wanted to have a county fair birthday party…so we did!  🙂

She’s not very big into sweets but she really wanted to try cotton candy at the rodeo on July 4th.  Turns out, she’s a fan!  She REALLY wanted cotton candy at the party so that was the theme of our invitation.

When I think of the county fair, I immediately think of show animals and I knew Wrex had a few boxes of rosettes in the garage from his show days that I wanted to use.  When I decorate for parties, I’m all about using and re-purposing things we already have so this was an easy way to add some purple pizzazz without spending any money.

For the backdrop, I had the idea to make paper rosettes with Sawyer’s name on them.  I just happened to find the purple and white paper fans at Oriental Trading for $0.50 a piece and then cut scrapbook paper to make the ribbon tails.  We printed letters for her name and added them to sparkly foam and voila!  My favorite part of the party…

Wrex and his dad made these ‘lemonade stands” for me out of old pallets we had in the shop.  We added a little paint and our rosette bunting and I absolutely loved how they looked…

We had a glitter tattoo booth, too!  I made livestock and ribbon templates, bought some glitter tattoo glue and some glitter and fancied the kids up…I just didn’t get any pictures of any of that.  Boo.

We HAD to have a cake walk – Sawyer’s favorite part of the party (besides her uncles, friends and cotton candy).

Wrex found some scrap carpet at Menards and I painted the numbers and made some tiny cakes and the cake walk was born.

Sawyer’s other favorite birthday game is pin the tail on the donkey.  We decided to pin the ribbon on the pig – totally fun to watch the kids fumble through this one!   I found some farm animal clip art I liked and had them blown up and printed at Staples as an engineer print ($3!!) and we used the pig for the game and the other animals as decor…

The kids got prizes at every game station, so we made little bags so they could keep up with their treasures…

I got lucky and found a roll of purple and white gingham table covering that totally jazzed up our tablescapes.  For centerpieces, I bought some purple buckets at the dollar store and planted some wheat seed the neighbors gave us.  We watered and waited and two weeks later we plopped some purple animals in them and called it cute!

Uncle Waco ran the cotton candy machine, automatically making him the most popular guy at the party…but he probably would’ve been anyways…

Besides cotton candy, we had BBQ sandwiches, corn dogs, curly fries, corn on the cob, popcorn and pickles!

We opened some presents and just had an all around good time!

The birthday girl got sang to but opted out of eating her cupcake.  😉

At the end of the day, we thanked our guests with goldfish!  Wrex thought real ones would be a cool, affordable parting gift but we opted for making goldfish soap so we didn’t upset any parents.  😉

We bought some plastic goldfish and some clear, glycerin soap.  We melted the soap down, poured it into bags, added a cute little fishy and tied it up with a ribbon.  These little guys were adorable, if I do say so myself.

All-in-all, it was my favorite party I’ve thrown.  Maybe it was because I know the birthday girl had such a good time and felt so loved…that’s the point, right?

Next up is Grandma Rusk’s 80th.  It’s gonna be a ball!