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How To Plan A Birthday Party On A Budget

September 15, 2014 / 20 Comments

I have gone 6 years thinking that my kids birthday parties had to be lavish and somewhat extraordinary, not in the Big Top Circus kind of way…  but I thought I had to pick a theme, character wise and stick with it, as well as rent out some type of location and invite everyone we knew and the food, well there just had to be lots of different plates.  Well, this year we decided to go ‘Old School’ as  my mom would say…  the kind of house parties that we had back in the day, the kind that you don’t see very often.  We could have spent more money on the actual party since we were saving on a venue but we decided to take the opportunity to try and save a little…  Here’s how we did it:

     1.   Invites - We set up an event on Facebook a month in advance, this way it gives everyone a chance to book it off of work or make other arrangements for their children.  I know that the kids love to get paper invitations handed to them but they are most of the time unneeded, especially if the guests are all family and close friends.  I love the convenience of the Facebook events, it makes it so much easier if any changes need to be made as well as keeping track of the RSVPs…  but the best thing about it, is it is completely FREE.


     2.  Decorations - Pick a theme and stick to it!  That doesn’t mean that if you pick a Sesame Street theme like we did, that all of the decorations have to be characters, just the colors are fine.  In fact the only things that we had that actually featured our theme was the Elmo Party Balloon that we were lucky enough to get from The Dollar Tree and the Elmo and Abby birthday cake.  The rest was just one bag of assorted color balloons and 3 tablecloths in red, blue and green (also from The Dollar Tree).

     3.  Food - As much as I used to believe that you had to have lots of food at a party, they really are more for the kids and I have never heard my son say “I can’t wait to go to that party, I’m going to eat so much food!”, it’s all about having fun for them.  I don’t have to have 2 different kinds of meat or 5 different kinds of salad…  Hot Dogs on the bar-b-que, a vegetable and fruit tray as well as 2 different kinds of chips are good enough…  Kool-Aid Jammers (which were on sale)  and a few $1 - 2L’s, is all that is needed.

photo credit: stevendepolo via photopin cc
       4. Candy Scramble -  How many times has your child come home with a treat bag full of junk?  I know I just throw away most of the stuff.  I used to buy stuff that I thought my guests would like and appreciate but that can be quite costly and how do I know that they weren’t going home and just throwing things out as well.  If the kids are hold enough, have a candy scramble, give them each a bag and go nuts throwing them in the air and let them work for their goodies, they’ll have fun and since they worked for them they will taste sweeter. 

     5.  Bake It Yourself - The cake is not something that I skimp on, not because of my baking skills but because of my decorating skills.  I swear if I would gave tried to make an Elmo cake it probably would have looked like a big red blob, but it is something that others do have the gift for and can save at least $40.

     6.  Buy On Clearance - Any of these things can be bought even cheaper than at a dollar store, if you just keep your eye out for deals and know your theme early.

Do you throw Extravagant Expensive parties or Savings Soirees?  What are some of your top tips for money saving parties?

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