Friday, May 16, 2008

Birthday Party Ideas for Cheap

Since I snowflake religiously I have to spend the least amount of money possible on everything to obtain my goals. That includes birthday parties.

My daughter turned nine recently and we needed to throw a party. I am not going to spend a million dollars on a birthday but there are some creative things that you can do to make it unbelievably memorable. Since we had to host 14 little girls and my daughter wanted a spa theme we came up with the idea to do stations where they could get nails done or their feet massaged or a crazy hair up-do, etc.

Here are some of the frugal things we came up with:


I enlisted the moms to man the stations - FREE - each mom had a station that she "worked" at and provided a service such as nails, hair, make-up, etc. For the nail station we all brought nail polish so the girls had many colors to choose from (FREE) We already had cuticle trimmers, nail files, lotion for hands, so I only had to buy jewels to glue onto the nail polish - $.49.


    I made goodybags - I used scrapbook paper 4/$1 from Michael's Arts & Crafts and some hot pink boas to make paper cones rimmed with feathers for the goodies bags. They look like hats in the pictures but since it was a spa party we had no need for hats.



The Sign on her chair - cardboard cut to size, fancy font printed on paper and cut out, lined with feather boa.










The Goody Table - tree with pink booms from the side yard, glass bowls from the kitchen to put goodies in, glass container from bathroom - all free. Tulle - $1/yard at Walmart. White sheet to cover the table. Goodies from Dollar Store - for example pink emery boards were a pack of 8 for $1.00.
Food - I made the cupcakes and searched around for any type of bulk candy that was pink. Pretzels covered in chocolate with pink sprinkles, etc. Anything to match the theme. Glass jars on table to store candy I borrowed from friends. I raided four houses.
















Having a party doesn't need to be expensive. Come up with creative, inexpensive ideas and it looks like you paid a million dollars for it. Onward snowflaking!

3 comments:

Kelly said...

This article has been included in the 5th Carnival of Snowflakes, going live May 22nd at http://www.mysmallcents.com.

Jerry said...

These are terrific and creative ideas. I see articles about people spending thousands of dollars on kids' birthday parties, and it leads me to think that they just don't have an ounce of creativity to fit in their big, fat wallets. The bottom line is that an investment of time and thought will save you from having to cash in the retirement annuity to help a kid celebrate a wonderful birthday party. Great job!
Jerry
www.leads4insurance.com

Anonymous said...

Great post. These all are the perfect ways to celebrate frugal party. Thanks for sharing, it will surly help me a lot. According to me party is more about innovative ideas rather than spending. Gifts are a major attraction of any fun party, so try to make some gifts at home. For more details refer frugal party ideas