When I read Bethanny’s post about her son’s birthday at the playground at Scottish Rite Hospital for Children, I knew that’s where we would host my daughter’s second birthday. It happens to be one of my girls’ favorite Dallas playgrounds and I loved that we could reserve the pavilion ahead of time. I knew it was a bit of a risk to host an outdoor party in October, but it’s such an awesome location, so it was a risk I was willing to take.
The week leading up to the party was a rainy one. I started to panic and realized I needed a backup location that could accommodate kids ranging in age from 2-5, didn’t require a lot of advance notice, was available on Halloween, and most importantly, wasn’t my own home.
The rain officially rained on my parade and we moved to our backup: the Carousel at Stonebriar Centre in Frisco. It turned out to be one of the easiest, low stress and FUN birthday parties we have thrown!
While there is an option to rent the Carousel before the mall opens (click here for rental information), we chose to keep the party at its scheduled time of 10am and take our chances with crowds. Well, it worked out in our favor because do you know who is at the mall at 10am sharp on a Saturday? Practically no one, that’s who.
We came in about ten minutes early, put some festive table cloths and light snacks down on the table. Before the guests arrived I quickly bought enough tokens for each child to ride the carousel 3 times. After three fun rides of switching horses, pretending they were on dragons and unicorns, and non-stop laughing, the kids made their way to the tables where we sang happy birthday and enjoyed a birthday donut from our favorite donut shop (Golden Star Donuts in Richardson).
While it wasn’t the morning party at the park I had originally planned, it was special nonetheless. Both of my daughters had a wonderful time and I know their friends did as well. If you are looking for an easy and fun indoor birthday party, definitely check out the Carousel at Stonebriar Centre!
