As a parent, it is easy to get caught up in throwing your child the best birthday party possible, which you can easily spend hundreds of dollars trying to do. However, you do not need to spend a fortune to have a successful birthday party. There are many great ways to throw your child a great birthday on a budget. Here are some tips for throwing a successful birthday party on a budget.
Tip #1: Stay Close to Home
Host your child’s birthday party in your family room or, weather permitting, in your backyard, literally. Holding your child’s birthday party at a public place is not a prerequisite for a successful birthday party. If your children have fun, get cake, open presents and enjoy spending time with their friends, in their eyes they’ve had a successful birthday party.
Tip #2: Bake Your Cake
Make the birthday cake yourself. Store bought cakes can cost you anywhere from $15 to $30 depending on the size and type of cake you buy. However, if you bake your child’s cake, it will cost you, at the most, $10; you need only buy the cake mix and the icing. There are many simple birthday cakes you can make that will come out looking professional and you’ll find decorating tips galore online that will help you make your cake look as good as a store bought one.
Tip #3: Balloons
Children do not care if the balloons are floating because they are helium-filled or because they’re taped to the wall. When it comes to balloons children either want to play with them or pop them. Balloons make great centerpieces, too. If you insist on having helium balloons, instead of paying a party store to fill them, look into renting a small helium tank so you won’t have to pay per balloon. Which option is cheaper depends on how many balloons you are having filled.
Tip #4: Create The Entertainment
Successful birthday parties are not made or broken based on whether or not a deejay or professional entertainer was present. There are lots of inexpensive, or free, fun games available that would work great for a kid’s party. Here’s a great example of a fun but practically free game for kids: place a piece of bubble gum on a paper plate and cover the bubble gum with whipped cream. Have the children place their hands behind their backs and then find the bubble gum and blow a bubble. The first person to do it wins. Craft projects and face painting are also big hits at birthday parties.
Tip #5: Homemade Invitations
Birthday parties are not successful because of the invitations. Nowadays, you can make your own computer-generated invitations for less than half the cost of store bought invitations. Creating invitations at home not only allows complete customization but it also allows your child to be involved in the party planning. If you don’t have a computer, you and your child make invitations with construction paper and markers, and maybe a few accessories to dress them up.
Tip #6: Go Theme-Free
Though themed parties like Hannah Montana and Transformers are popular, you don’t need to throw a commercially themed party for it to be successful. Commercially themed parties tend to cost a lot because of everything that you need to buy. If your child really wants to have a Hannah Montana themed party, for example, you can compromise and buy only the paper plates, cups and silverware, then buy decorations in corresponding color schemes such as orange and purple, for example. Or you could do a color theme or a eschew the theme idea entirely and just go with a few games, some cake and ice cream and great friends for a birthday party they’ll remember for years to come.
Leave a Reply