In trying to plan a birthday party for your young child, no one says you have to overspend for it to be a meaningful and exciting party. These days, everyone is hurting from lack of money, and there’s no sense going into debt over a simple birthday party. If you like to recycle, are frugal, and are creative in nature, you can host a great party without over-spending.
First of all, keep it simple. Children under 5 are generally easy to amuse. That said, they also don’t have long attention spans, and need the chance to explore at will. If you plan out their party too much, it will work against you - they will become bored and cranky. That’s the last thing you need when you’re already stressed out with having a zillion kids and adults you must entertain. So refrain from planning anything elaborate. Your child won’t remember much about it anyway, except through the many photographs you take (hopefully) to commemorate the event. Further measures for keeping things simple: make or purchase a few simple decorations, don’t have the party around a meal-time (to avoid over-spending on food), and limit the party to 2 hours maximum.
Planning the party
The Invitations
In order to get the word out for your child’s birthday party, why purchase invitations? Think of the desktop printer as your best friend. If you have enough paper and ink, you can use a template in Microsoft Publisher, or use clip art and fancy fonts to make your own type of invitation in Microsoft Word. Make things even more personalized by saving images of characters or scanning images onto your computer from your child’s favorite books, and include those on the invitation, or simply use a recent photo of your child. If you don’t have a printer, but still want to send out invitations, you can always send out online invitations with a site such as evites.com. It’s free, allows you to personalize it, and keeps everything organized. As long as the people all have email addresses, you’re all set. Of course, if it’s a relatively small party, you might also be able to get by with calling your guests to invite them. It’s up to you, and really, as long as the guests receive some sort of candy or cake, they won’t hold it against you that you didn’t "formally" invite them to the party.
Your guests
In talking about the guests themselves, you don’t have to feel obligated to invite everyone your child knows. And honestly, not everyone who you invite will even show up - even if they RSVP. I’ve heard it said that the number of children at a party should be no more than your child’s age. Any more than that, and you might have too much to handle. It makes sense - though it is not always possible, especially if you have several children in your family itself, let alone any neighborhood, church, or preschool friends. So here you want to use your best judgement, according to the number of people you can accommodate - in terms of space, food, and entertainment. Many people tend to have small parties for young children, followed by a family cook-out or pot-luck. Pot-lucks can be a savvy way of ensuring you have enough food, if you are comfortable in asking your relatives to come armed with a dish. Most will be obliging, unless they are traveling from very far or are staying with you for an extended time. Even then, you could ask for them to help pitch-in some money to put towards the food you plan on serving.
Location, location, location
The location is crucial to whether or not you have to even spend money on decorating. It is safe to say that having a specialized birthday where you pay for services rendered (like at a skating rink, Chuck E. Cheese, or an arcade) can be expensive. Stay away from those options if you’re on a budget! Your backyard or home (or someone else’s), a clubhouse, or the park can all be ideal locations. If outdoors, you can cut down on the need for much entertainment or decorations. The park can be free, depending on where you live, and even to rent a pavilion is reasonable at anywhere from $20 - $50 dollars for the entire day. If weather is an issue, you could talk with your child’s preschool or your church to see if it would even be possible to rent (or borrow) the building for the party. I have done all of the above for my daughter’s parties thus far. Last year, I held the party at the preschool after-hours and its owners were nice enough to not even charge us for having it there! We just made sure we cleaned the place really well before leaving.
Decorating
As I previously mentioned, you can get away with not really decorating if you are having the party outdoors or in a kid-friendly environment that might already have colorful adornments. But you can easily spend under $10 by purchasing streamers, balloons, and a banner (or paper to make one) all from the Dollar store. Anything beyond such decorations is really a waste of your time, money, and energy. All you’ll be doing later is cleaning up and throwing most of it out. It might look pretty, but so can strategically-placed balloons, decorative colored utensils, napkins, and plates, and the pièce-de-résistance - the cake! Why not set up a table with a lively tablecloth (you can purchase one for the Dollar store) and pile the gifts on it as an added visual display? A table centerpiece can be the birthday cake, nothing else.
If you’re worried about prying hands, here’s an alternative for a centerpiece with a personal touch. You’ll need clear contact paper, photos of your child, an empty box (or three of varying sizes) and festive wrapping paper. Wrap the boxes. Apply the contact paper to the photographs for DIY lamination. Glue the photos to the sides of the boxes, stacking them to create a tower formation, or use one box per table if you need multiple centerpieces.
The food
A birthday party doesn’t have to include a meal. It can be punch and cake, and everyone still goes home happy. A generic store-bought cake an be less than $20, but you can bake your own and decorate it for less. Cupcakes are a handy option to ensure that no one argues over whose slice of cake is bigger. Cupcakes are cost-effective, eliminating the need for utensils and plates. If you do plan on serving more than just cake, finger foods are easy and make sense if you plan the party for mid-morning or after-lunch, when guests are not necessarily hungry. You can get away with serving chicken nuggets, mini peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, or even popcorn. To drink, fruit punch is a big hit because you can buy a mix that yields several servings.
The games
Young children don’t take kindly to organized games, unless you have extreme patience and their utmost attention - both of which are hard to come by when you have a room full of people. So stick to perhaps having the children all watch a short video, have them run outside, play hot potato, or set up a blanket on the floor with a vast array of toys for the children to pick up at random and amuse themselves with. They may not all play together at every opportunity, and if they don’t all known each other, it might also be a way to brake the ice. You can purchase small toys for goody bags that they can play with while at the party, but you can also by-pass both if you decide to have the children make something that they can eat/wear/play with and/or take home with them. You can print off coloring pages, bookmarks, or jig-saw puzzle designs to color; provide them with string and a box of elbow macaroni to make their own necklaces; provide art supplies or make home-made playdough and allow the kids time to create their own works of art in various forms.
In conclusion
It’s best to leave the presents until after the party, when everyone has gone home. Believe me, it creates less of a hassle, and you can have your child open presents while you clean up. Hopefully all the tips have been helpful for you. But if ever you want some specific ideas, check out:
