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Welcome guest party blogger, Wendy Thomas! She is the mother of six children and lives in New Hampshire with her husband, Marc. Wendy writes a weekly column in the Nashua Telegraph called “Simple Thrift” that offers thrifty tips for today’s times. She also blogs about her family’s budget experiments (including the great hamburger experiment) at www.simplethrift.wordpress.com.
This weekend I tried to do the near impossible. I tried to have a Birthday party for my 9 year old daughter with a budget of less than 10 dollars.
Sounds crazy? Well to me what sounds even crazier are the prices that parents are paying for their children’s birthday parties. Between the cost for renting sites like bouncy places or baseball cages and the cost for pizza, a store bought cake, ice cream, candy, oh and let’s not forget the goodie bags – things have become insane. One could (and many do) pay well over several hundred dollars for a single birthday party.
And then there are the gifts for the birthday child. It is not uncommon for a child to get a 25 dollar gift certificate to a local store – from everyone. At a party we had for one of my sons, he walked away with over 200 dollars worth of gift cards. That’s a lot of money for a kid and completely unnecessary. In fact to me, it sounds crazy.
Here’s a dark, well kept secret. At parties, kids just want to have fun.
They don’t need huge celebrations. They don’t need lots of gift cards. What they need is a bunch of friends who acknowledge that today is a special day. They need to have a blast and laugh, that’s what makes a good party. Things had to change, so I took a stab at it.
I sent a letter to the parents inside each invitation telling them my plans. I asked for their help by not sending any gift that cost more than 5 dollars. The parents were thrilled about the idea. “It’s about time” said one mom.
Four children were invited and we started the party off by taking them to the theater at the local library to watch “Bolt”. (The movie was free). The kids sat on the floor in a group and giggled at the film. I provided each child with a small treat-sized box of nerds to eat during the movie (world’s best candy – it can take about 20 minutes to eat all those little pieces).
After the movie, I took the kids back to the house where we had cupcakes and an ice cream cup. Once the food was cleared, they created heart foam frames using a kit I had purchased at 90 percent off after Valentine’s Day. The gifts my daughter received were:
- A 5 dollar gift cert to the dollar store
- 5 dollars to be used only at a dollar DVD rental place
- A diary write-in book
- 5 packs of Tic-Tacs – (from a friend who could not make the party)
- A horse set – and while it cost a little bit more than 5 dollars, the mom sent me a note saying that she had had the duplicate gift in a closet for 2 years and was thrilled with the opportunity to move it on.
My daughter was ecstatic. The parents were motivated to change their parties and each child happily left the party with a small goodie bag holding a pencil, a bracelet, some candy, and a lip gloss ring. The party was the talk at the school on Monday (even some of the teachers were talking about what a good idea it was).
And guess what? For a party where the kids got to see a movie at a theater, got to have cake and ice cream, and where they were also able to do a craft, the total cost came in at a budget pleasing $3.19.
Not bad, not bad at all.
