Frugal Friend Birthday Party

Last night we had a 6th birthday party for my son.

Although many of his friends over the past year have had great parties at places like Chuck E. Cheese, bowling, a gynmastics center, and bounce places, I couldn’t bring myself to pay for the steep cost associated with such a party. I worried about setting a precedent for the party and then being expected to have a party like that every year (and for his brother too).

So, I wanted a frugal birthday party, but I wanted to try to avoid having it at my house again. We decided on a party at the park. With a summer birthday, you can do things like that . We decided on a Thursday evening to allow time to cool off a little (it didn’t really), and we hoped the park wouldn’t be so busy as on a Saturday.

Food – We ordered $5 Little Caesar’s pizzas, since we had the party during dinnertime. If I had the party on a Saturday, I would have had the party between 2-4 and just served cake. We also had juice packets that I had purchased on major sale a couple of months ago and bottled water (although I should have just brought our big camping water dispenser to have lots of water available).

Cake – My son doesn’t like cake (just the frosting), so I made him a WallE cookie cake…easy to make and very low cost

Entertainment – The boys played on the play structure at the park, ate pizza and cookie cake, opened presents, and threw water balloons at my husband.

Party Favors – Since WallE is apparently not very popular anymore, all the WallE stuff at the party store was on clearance. I purchased some WallE noise makers, stickers (gave each child a page of stickers), and I visited the dollar store. I splurged on WallE bubbles that I found ($1 for each child), and purchased other items with multiple items per package (dinosaurs and card games).

I think the boys (and my son) had just as much fun as if it were at a party place. I just had to do a little more work myself to pull it off .

What have you done to save money on birthday parties? For more frugal ideas, please visit Life as Mom.