Birthdays are a lot of fun. However, they can get expensive too! Between the gifts, the cake and possibly a venue, how can you save money?
You don’t a
“Dollar tree! And if it’s a family or neighborhood gathering, we do potluck and everyone bring something like cups, plates, etc. We go easy on decor.” – Matt/Amber T.
“Make a menu and decide on one or two things for each category of food instead of ten lol. You dont need three pasta salads and seven meats. Seeing it on paper shows you how much food you are already going to have.
Also I try to make my own decor and work it into being purposeful. Like a dressed up sunday bar. It serves and is pretty. I made my own pin the tail game for my sons birthday which was dinosaurs. I did pin the horn on the triceratops and made the whole sign festive and awesome. So it was decorative and a party game. We also always make a choice between more variety or more people. If we want more people we do more generic stuff. For borthdays we usually want more specific food and we like doing thank you bags (usually cookies although one year my son had a farm animal themed birthday and the partiers got a planter I got on sale and some seeds and gardening gloves) so we only invite very close people. We keep it to the kids direct aunts and uncle in the area and grandparents and cousins. That allows us to go a little more all out then if every third cousin and friend of a friend were there. And our kids enjoy themselves more.” – Lacey J.
“Dollar tree, clearance isles, Dollar stores, and walmart/target for decorating. Then make a food list and study it to see what to actually get. I usually make to big of a list, so I have to cut it down
Make invitations, banners and decorations on your own.” – Mindy S.
“We only buy the character tablecloth. The rest is coordinating solid colored stuff from the dollar store.” – Lisa B.
“Make the decorations yourself. Don’t buy the pre-made stuff.” – Katie H.
“Pinterest is your friend. Get creative. We used a two dollar table cloth from Walmart and decorated it with stars, and turned it into a photo booth.” – Steff/Randi N.
“Instead of paying for a fancy (aka expensive) theme cake, buy a large sheet cake from Walmart and decorate it yourself. For example, if you have a Lego themed party, you can put Legos on the cake, etc. We wanted a Minecraft cake last year, but to have one made for the large number of people we were going to have would have cost a small fortune. We bought a white sheet cake and used edible paper to make a creeper face. Much cheaper, and it turned out cute!” – Debi O.
“I look for printable party supplies online that are free. You can find pretty much any theme and they are super cute. It just takes some time to print and cut everything but once you do that and put it together it comes out quite nice. Also, if it’s not free online there is usually a small fee and you can have a 100% themed party with more decorations than you could even buy at the store. It’s definitely worth it.” – Danielle P.
Make sure you watch Facebook each Monday for our newest question and share your ideas. You may find your name and tip featured each week on Penny Pinchin’ Mom!