After weeks of planning for our #DisneySide @Home Celebration, the big day finally arrived.  From the time that I was chosen, the box arrived it has been a buzz at our house.  After we got the Mickey Mouse

themed party supplies it was an easy decision to go with a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse theme and the Carnival part seemed perfect given that our party was for 3 year old’s.  Given that there were going to be many 3 year olds with tons of energy, my husband and I made the decision to hold the party at a beautiful park in South Florida.  The kids can be loud, run around, enjoy the carnival activities and make a mess without any problems.

My invitations were courtesy of HP.  HP sent me several boxes of printable photo paper and with the HP Photo Creations program, it was so easy to design them, print them and mail them out.  HP was so generous that I have left over photo paper and decided that as a little extra goodie, to print pictures from the party and give them to the families, so that they have pictures of their children having a blast!

So let’s start with the food!  Half of the fun of any carnival is that the snacks are fun, can easily be matched up to some of the fun food you eat at Disney Parks and kids love it all!  I choose to go with Corn Dogs, Popcorn from our vintage machine packaged in little fun bags, pretzels, grapes and Mickey Mouse shaped rice krispy treats (thanks to Disney for sending me the Mickey mouse cookie cutter).  The main dessert was actually part of an activity station, cupcake decorating.  With the help of Homekeeters, a craft website and shop, I was able to get Mickey printables and do adorable matching placecards with descriptions of the food as well as wrap all of the water bottles with Mickey Mouse labels.  Presentation always takes a party set-up from good to great!

Eight 3 year old’s including the mini-host, are going to need activity stations to keep them happy and entertained.  We of course had our favorite Disney tunes playing at the party the entire time.  I had four activity stations set up so that the kids could pick and choose what they would like to do.  Station 1:  Art : Using the Cheer Boards that Disney sent us along with downloadable coloring sheets from the DisneySide Celebrations website, I had an art station with crayons and tons of Mickey stickers.  Station 2: The Cupcake Decorating Station: My son and his friends love cooking and treats so it seemed like a fun idea to bake the cupcakes before the party and then they could use the icing, sprinkles and Mickey & Minnie candies to decorate their own desserts.  I will say this was probably the most loved station of them all.  Station 3: Bubbles and Beach Balls:  What kid does not like bubbles?  We set up our Bubble Machine (buy tons of big bottles) and kept it running the entire 3 hours.  Beach balls just seemed like a good match to play with amongst all of the bubbles. Station 4: Playground:  The bonus of having it at a park a huge slide and playground.

The kids had a great time and so did the parents.  Everyone told me to tell the #DisneySide team thank you for the great goodies.  You can always gauge a successful party by the length that everyone stays and the tears when it really is time to go (late).  However, I find that by giving goodie bags and prizes at the very end makes leaving not so bad.  The goodie bags had the Pluto temporary tattoos, the ESPN bracelets, Ocean Spray Craisins, lollipops, the Muppets Calendars and my personal favorite the Mickey & Minnie Posters.  Some great Swag on the way out!

In the end everyone, had a great time and all of the kids were worn out, which as a parent is always a bonus!  A little quiet time after, to which I did get this week a few thank you’s for that too!

The sad part about this post is that our #DisneySide party is over!  It was such an honor to be chosen and be a part of the group of hostesses.  However, our #DisneySide will be going on all year, with a trip to Walt Disney World in 4 more days and then this Summer a Disney Planes Birthday Party for our Son!  And I have been challenged to go as fancy and even bigger with that party.  So we shall see what that will entail.

** I received free products in order to host my Disney Side @Home Celebration.  My opinions expressed in this post are my own. **