A Great Birthday party on a dime

Easy ways of saving on your child's next birthday party

With our rough economical times, it is nice to know that there are ways we can still cut costs.  Yes, that means getting back to the basics, but if you remember that's what we started with.

Do you want to throw a great party for your child but can't afford it?  Well, here is a great way to do so and keep your costs down.

First have a family meeting.  During this meeting you will want to find out what your child would like the theme of their next party to be.  How many guests will be allowed, if it will be an indoor party or outdoor. Most importantly, set a budget.  This budget should cover the costs of all the basic needs for your event.

For this example our budget is set at $50.00

The theme chosen is Elmo.  The age of the child is 7.  For easy decorations, gather up your child's Elmo collection if they have one.  These will make great props. If your child has a shirt with Elmo on it, you can even use it. Cost: $0.00

Elmo's colors are red and yellow, you can easily find plates, napkins and more at your local dollar store.  If you keep the number of guest low, so will be the amount of items you may need. For this example, say you have 15 children attending, most of the plate sets come in groups of 20-25.  Same with napkins and forks.  So your cost is roughly $3.00

If you can't bake but, can put together a mix, you can easily make a cake the flavor your child likes for about $2.00 depending on the mix you purchase, you can decorate it simply with red frosting to represent elmo's colors, although you might be able to get away with finding elmo decorations in the baking isle of your local grocery store, typically they run about $1.00 to $3.00 depending on the set.  So you can bake a cake and decorate it for around $5.00.

Don't forget some healthy snacks, you will probably want to have some carrot sticks and celery.  You can by what is available at your grocery store, simply cut up the veggies grab some dressing from your fridge and you are set to go. For a bag of carrots and celery, roughly $5.00 usually less.

Want to give you little give aways?  Make the kids work for them by providing games for them to do.  How about the clothes pin game.  You need 5 clothes pins, and a jug of some sort with a wide enough opening for the clothes pins to fall through.  The child stands above the jug, you hand them the clothes pin and they try to make it into the jugs.  Who ever gets the most in wins.  Pin the nose on elmo, if your child has a picture of elmo in their room, simply cut circles out of the sticky part of those wonderful 3m pads you might have laying around your home.  Label each one with the kids names, and there you have it.  Don't forget the blind fold, a scrap of fabric, dad's old tie work great.  Another easy game to pull together, how about a small treasure hunt, you make slips of clues, put them in different rooms of the house leading them to different parts around your home and eventually to a hiding place maybe in your back yard where they find a treassure box with some small items in it. The gifts you can get from the dollar store, color books, crayons, depending on the age of the children, there is an endless supply of prize ideas. If you have a total of 3 games for them to play, that's 3 prizes to get $3.00 is your total.

So far your cost is $13.00 for a world of fun.

Don't forget some punch when the kids get thristy.  This is also easy enough, you can pick up different cans of juice from the grocery store.  For example, pineapple, grape and mixed fruit juice, just put some of it into a pitcher stir together and you are set.  Cost: $5.00

We are now up to $18.00.  It is amazing how simply a party can be pulled together.

There are a lot more things you can do with this party but, if you want to keep it simple and to the point, this is one of your best solutions.

Next, catch how you can throw a teen party on a dime.  You can even bring out the Diva that's deep in you.