For the tables I used red and yellow table cloths and blue napkins.  I made clown heads on a dowel and put into a 4" painted ceramic pot that I filled with jellybeans and lollypops. I put out baskets of popcorn and peanuts and serpentine ribbons on the table. I put a favor at each place like a small rubber ball and attached feel good sayings like "we always have a 'ball' when you're around", a mini hand clapper: "we applaud all that you do" kazoo: "having you here is music to our ears" whistle: "just 'whistle' and we'll come running" top: "your 'tops' in our book" etc. so it really looked festive and colorful. On the stage I ran vertically red, yellow and blue tablecloths to look like a circus tent. I had my bubble machine on outside the front door and had rainbow windsocks and streamers on the rails. This was also an awards dinner so we handed out 1 round of awards then did games and alternated between them to keep everyone interested. I ended up with 4 teams of about 25 each I put 3 long tables together in a continuous line, I named the teams, the jugglers, the lion tamers, the clowns, and the high flyers. I put a double sided team name out on every table as part of the decorations as well.

For the circus acts I called up 2 contestants (had to be different contestants each time) from each team for each act and here is what we did:

Act 1:

Hula Hoop - I had the hoops laid out to look like circus rings on the stage and then told the team members to stand in their ring and the team member that hula'd the longest won the point.

Lemon juggling - I gave the other team member 3 small lemons and said that the first one to juggle would win the point. I asked the audience "Will they be able to juggle or will we be having lemonade" (we served lemonade with dinner) 1 point was awarded to the first team that juggled

Act 2:

Blindfolded darts - I had one team member spin the other team member 3 times then direct them in the proper direction towards the foam sheet board (foam insulation from Home Depot) that had balloons on it. I had a person cutout that didn't make it to the board to represent the the blindfolded knife/dart throwing act. I asked the audience if there were any volunteers to stand in front of the dart board, of course there were none, but it was funny. 1 point was awarded for every popped balloon

Balloon pop - I had a bunch of red and blue balloons blown up on the stage (it looked great) and the 1st team member that didn't throw darts would have to sit on the balloons and pop them, and the other team member had to bring them the balloons to sit on. One point was
awarded for every popped balloon.

Specific committee's were brought up to compete against each other and we ended up doing a lion tamer show with whistle commands. I was told to come up with something for this the night before and I still had 100 clown cupcakes to make so this was all I could come up with.

Act 3:

- Clown hat ring toss
- Bean bag toss into a clown's mouth.

Fun was had and the awards weren't so boring this year with many compliments on the best awards ceremony in years. I gave out a door prize at the beginning of each act to get the audiences attention as well. Everyone was given a ticket when they arrived.

I wasn't in charge of the food other than the dessert so they had pizza, lasagna, salad, and lemonade. I think they ran out of food just before they ran out of people, but at least they had popcorn and peanuts, jellybeans and lollys to snack on before dinner.