Having A Party?? Saving $$ by PREPLANNING!
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Last year I wrote a post about Saving Money on Children’s Birthday Parties which really has some creative and key ideas to how we save money on our kid’s parties but one thing I didn’t really touch on was pre-planning! Right now our boys are 5 and 3 years old (with spring and summer birthdays).
You may be wondering why I’m thinking about their party SO early – I mean it’s 4-5 months away! You’re right – but by even just thinking about it this early I can save hundreds of dollars with creative ideas and by having the time to collect the right resources! We usually do a themed party of some sort (first it was Blue’s Clues, then it was trains, one year we threw a ROCKING bug birthday party and last year was an awesome Robot birthday party!!! I’m not sure how I will top off these awesome parties every year, but this upcoming year we will be having a Fossil Hunting party and a Colors Paint party!
Typically our biggest expense for parties is the food itself. This is what we really budget for.
For decorations I do not buy themed decorations – I stick with a themed color. For robots I did doing silver/black and green/blue. I spend half of the year keeping my eyes peeled for clearance on balloons, plates, etc. After New Years and Christmas is mostly when I pick up these items as they are “after holiday clearance”. I’ve already bought balloons, streamers, and plates for $.50 a pack.
For outside, sidewalk, and other indoor decor I typically make my own. Of course my kids are younger so I can totally get away with it! For our Blue’s Clue’s party I cut out pawprint shaped construction paper and lined paw prints up our walkway. For the pirates I put Halloween spiderweb on the porch with our fog machine and “Caution” yellow tape. For our bugs party we made our own “ladybug” pinata that you see in the picture earlier in this post.
Last year for robots I built a huge robot out of boxes to go on our porch and let him “welcome” our guests. When we were done with it we donated it to a local preschool! I utilized every box I could get my hands on to create life-sized robots hanging on our walls and build robot buddies out of boxes for the tabletops and corners of the house.
Putting together games can be SO inexpensive – and free most of the time – if you’re a bit creative. Google your theme’s party ideas if you aren’t as creative as you would desire to be. There are plenty of neat ideas out there! One thing I did for our robot party last year was have a huge pile of “parts” in the backyard – boxes, kitchen utensils, containers – anything I could get my hands on. The kids then got to rush over to the large pile and create their own robot! I spent months browsing yard sales for cheap robot gear!
For invitations I typically make my own for about $5-8 but this year I snagged a steal on a daily deal site so I will actually be ordering my boy’s party invitations and thank you cards for about $10.
I always make our own birthday cake and I get creative. One year money was tight and we were just trying to figure out what my youngest son could eat since we’d learned he had a severe food allergy – so we actually made this cute ladybug rice krispy cake! Last year I bought some pound cake mixes I found on clearance that my boys can have and they helped out in making the robot’s arms on their cake. Did you know that buying a birthday cake from the bakery can easily run you $50-$100? Ouch!
The last area where I really look hard to save money (but not look cheap!) is party favors. I don’t want to find something that will break the second that kids walk out of the door, but I do want to get creative in saving money. One year each child that can to our bug party got to keep their butterfly net and magnifying glass that we had supplied during the party. For Blue’s Clues we had plain treat bags filled with Blue’s stickers and other treats we had bought. This year I found a SUPER cute idea for robots made out of recycle soup cans! Cute huh?
.JPG "recycled soup can robots")
This year for our Fossil Hunt party I will actually be using recycled coffee grounds to create DIY Dino Digs for party favors!! And for the Colors Paint party I am collecting old paint cans for decorations! The sky is the limit when you have the extra time to plan for parties like this and you can save hundreds of dollars by simple doing it yourself!! How do you save money on your kids birthday parties?
Great advice!! I also agree that it's best to do color themed decorations, so much cheaper!!! Only problem is that it requires pre-planning 😉
Oh those can-robots are fabulous!! I agree you can make amazing party decorations, cakes etc by taking a little time and effort and doing it yourself!
My girls tend to change their mind LOTS about the theme of their parties so it's tricky to plan too far in advance – but we do try to do what we can ourselves!
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You are SERIOUSLY artistic! Wow. I am totally coveting that ladybug pinata. Please can I give you my birth date, then sit back while you do all the planning?
LOL Alexandra – the ladybug pinata was SO easy (but time consuming) to make!! 🙂 Maybe I should be a professional frugal party planner – LOL