shelbe lane
- Mar 25, 2019
- 4 min read

Vintage Circus Birthday Party

Happy Monday, Friends! Today on the blog I'm sharing some details of my Lucy's 4th Birthday Party!

We have been watching the move, "The Greatest Showman" on repeat in our house lately and after much deliberation, my tiny princess declared she knew what theme she wanted her party to be.

This catchy spectacular film featuring Hugh Jackman and Zac Efron has occupied almost every night in our house. Not to mention all the costumes and amazing songs (how is every song SO GOOD?!) has truly mesmerized my 4 year old's heart. And honestly, myself included. (A Million Dreams are keeping me awake too, ya'll.)

I wanted to do a Vintage Circus theme that really focused on the big posters they used back then to advertise the Circus.

My thought was to have a couple posters of each of the characters around the party, but Lucy would be dressed as each one of them. Can you just IMAGINE her dressed as the tattooed muscle man?! haha!

I set out to quickly make a "Ringleader" costume for her that included a velvet blazer ($4 at Once Upon a Child, boy section) and tiny top hat that I got for past New Year's day celebrations. I sewed some red sequin strips to the sleeves and some gold tassels to the shoulders.

I also took a white long sleeve shirt from her closet, added a black bow tie and added some more gold ribbon and gold buttons across the chest. She already had a white tutu and the striped leggings. I also added another strip of red sequins to the top hat and secured it with some hot glue.

We took some photos of her in the Ringleader costume to use for the invites. I took the original photo and added it to PowerPoint. I then clicked the image and selected to "remove the background". This never turns out "perfect" but pretty darn close is close enough for me. For the invites I kept the image in color. For the poster, I had changed the image to black and white, also done in PowerPoint.

My tiny Ringleader!

Most of the time I get on Etsy for the invites, but after the Holidays, I'm also so pressed on time to get that done. I created the invite this year through Canva. Super cool site that allows you to create all kinds of digital marketing flyers. Invitations is just one of the items you can make. I did pay $3 for the one time use of some of the graphics. I also purchased the invites through Canva, for surprisingly, pretty cheap, and had them shipped to my door for free.

Can you all appreciate my song lyric details?

Next up, decorations:

I LOVE a deal. So most of the party decor items are from the... Dollar Store. (Mic Drop).

We have the best Dollar Store around. I believe its technically called the "Dollar Tree". They have the best party supplies, party decor, gift bags, and balloons and are always my go to for parties.

My newest find at the Dollar Store would be these:

OH MY GOODNESS, I hit the craft jackpot. These things are like mini-command strips, they are SUPER STICKY, and you get like a million of them in one roll... for ONE DOLL HAIR.

Foam Mounting Tape - Dollar Tree

I used these all over the party, from the streamers to the banners and fans, to holding up the elephants head piece. They are a BIG win in my book. (SIDE NOTE: NOT a good idea to stick them directly to a wall. They will be a pain to remove, BUT, they stick GREAT to all other things... sorry Babe!)

I like to always have one main "Feature Table" at all my parties. This table is the most decorated, has the cake, etc., and aligns with your theme. For this party, I had the main table in the living room and also had a smaller table in the kitchen that housed some more treats. This table also featured the other poster, Acrobat Lucy.

These instant download paper acrobats came from ETSY. I printed them on heavy paper, cut them out, and was able to bend their knees and hands around pipe cleaners, molded into acrobat hoops and swings. I secured them with small pieces of tape

The "WANTED! Unique Persons..." posters were definitely a good find. Also an Instant Download from ETSY.

For the photo of Lucy as the acrobat, I had her sit on top of a small stool with a hula hoop under her. I then deleted the stool in PowerPoint by "removing the background".

Here is the original photo:

I had the photos printed on blueprint paper at Staples for just a few bucks. Here is my blog post that details how to that.

The cookies were a mix of Top Hats, Circus Tents, and Stars. They were so adorable and so yummy. We had cotton candy, popcorn, animal cookies, and corn dogs. The kiddos could color or add temporary tattoos and be like the tattoo man, but mostly they ran around and played in the playroom.

For the Elephants headpieces, I took a piece of tissue paper and cut it in half, folded and cut it into strips. I twisted it on a pipe cleaner around its head and secured it with one of those sticky foam mounting squares. I sat the elephants on top of top hats.