I just wrote an entire blog post about how to throw a cheap party. You can check it out here. I think we can all agree there is a time and place to throw a cheap party and there is a time when you have to invest a little bit more. Man, do those birthdays add up quickly though! Decorating for parties is one of my most favorite things to do. When Cal turned 3 a couple weeks ago, he wanted a Spider Man birthday. Right now, we are Spidey everything in the household. Surprisingly, there weren't tons of Spider Man decorations out there. There were the typical party-type paper cutouts and frilly hangers, but nothing that was really unique. Ever since Teddy had an Encanto birthday and we hung colored paper decorations from the ceiling, I try to incorporate some type of ceiling hanging to tie the birthday together. That's when it hit me how to do this with Spider Man in a unique and cheap way - SPIDERWEBS. Yep, I invested in some additional Halloween spiderwebs and hung them from the ceiling to make it look like Spiderman came to visit the house. It was a little tricky to hang the spider webs. I actually ended up using clear shipping tape to hang the webs to the ceiling. I had to tape the webs up more frequently than I expected. It's also important to STRETCH the webs quite a bit to make them look real. I spent about $3-$5 on the spiderwebs and it may be my favorite birthday decoration yet! It really tied the theme together and it didn't look junky and cheap like store bought decorations sometimes can. I did splurge and buy a Spiderman giant balloon from Party City and hang him in the corner to look like he was hanging by one of the webs. While the boys and I made our own Spidey decoration too, the store bought one added just the right amount of Spider Man to the webs so people could tie all the components together.
The best part is that we get to reuse the spiderwebs at Halloween too. I am all about reusing and recycling decorations as much as I can! For another example of how I did this with Spiderman, I bought GENERIC spider decorations so we can use them at Halloween. Take a look at the halloween spider table runners. They looked great over the $1 plastic table cloth and they can be reused on Halloween.
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How To Throw A Cheap Party With KidsI am the first one to bargain hunt when throwing a party. I never realized how expensive parties are and how tricky it is to throw a cheap party. In our house, we throw parties for EVERYTHING. Literally everything. You can look at how to throw a dog birthday here. You can look at how to throw a Bluey birthday here. Why Throw So Many Parties With KidsWhy do we throw so many "parties"?
How to Keep Parties Cheap for KidsThat being said, if we are throwing so many different parties, we have to recycle various decorations. We have multiple "Decoration" tubs in our laundry room. We try hard not to throw decorations away and we recycle and reuse. The Dollar Tree is our favorite Party Store. Different Dollar Tree locations sometimes have different decorations. No matter how often we visit, I feel like we never know what we are going to find. Amazon also has some good deals when you are buying party supplies in bulk. As easy as Party City and Oriental Trading are, they are sometimes pricier and not my favorite places to go to when trying to save a buck throwing a cheap party. We like to make our own decorations when we can. The kids can color pictures or make large posters for the party. I have so many videos and tutorials on how to make cardboard cut-outs. These decorations cost us about $.50 for the poster board and they really fill up the space and take up some creative time to do. Buy food and drinks when they are on sale. For example, I stock up on soda and bags of chips when they are on sale at the grocery store or Target. I keep them in the pantry because we never know when we might need to celebrate something! I also always keep a jar of salsa or cheese dip on hand too. Save all unused paper plates, plastic silverware, and party napkins. We have mason jars of plastic silverware ready to go that we can just bring out in a moment's notice for a party. Even if the party plates don't necessarily match the theme, the feeling of having party plates add to the party feeling. No one gets too picky when they know the kids threw the party together. Example of a Cheap Party Thrown By KidsOnce we get into the playoffs of sports, we like to throw "parties" when we watch the game. The kids don't particularly care about the game at all, but they are more apt to let us enjoy the game when they got to decorate and continue decorating for the party. For our last football party, it took the kids HOURS to decorate and it cost me about $5 to help them with the supplies. First, we had streamers that we purchased before and used some of the colors. PRO TIP - buy these at the Dollar Tree not at Party City where they mark the pricing up on them. Then we made our own decorations. We made posters for the sports team we were cheering on. Sure, we outlined some, but Teddy also drew and created his own signs. Investing in plastic table clothes and paper plates/napkins is an easy way to stick to the color scheme and theme of the party. You can snag them at the Dollar Store too. Recycling and reusing decorations is the way to go! You never know when a theme may come back around! No one can talk me out of believing that throwing a cheap party is a fun activity to get the kids involved in what's going on. Throwing a cheap party is silly but rewarding! See it all come together here: |