6 Ways to Save Money on Birthday Parties

I love planning parties.  And planning my kid's birthday parties are my very favorite thing.  I love having them help pick a theme for the party based on what they're currently into and then having lots of fun collecting the perfect items for the party.  We always celebrate with both sides of our families and then do a little something small at home on their actual birthday.

We recently celebrated Fletcher's birthday and it was so sweet.  It's hard to believe right after we celebrated his birthday last year that the world shut down in a lot of ways.  Life has been weird this year, but we are starting to see sunnier days ahead.  It was great to get together to celebrate Fletcher.

1. Check Your Party Supply Stash First

Go through you plates, napkins, cups, silverware, platters, straws, etc. and see what items you have that would work for your theme.  Once you've done that, make a list of the party supplies you still need.  I grabbed flag napkins from my 4th of July stash, some leftover striped straws from Halloween and added in some yellow to use platters I already owned.  Everything came together so cute... I mean tough :)

 

2. Make Your Own Invitations

A really easy way to make your own invitations is to take your own picture, use Pic Monkey and then text out the invitation to your family and friends.  You can opt for a Pic Monkey subscription and that is still much more affordable than paying someone else to design an invitation for you.

Fletch is really into "army guys" right now.

I kept my eye out for some army vehicles in our town and this tank just jumped out at me one day.  I knew I had to get Fletcher's picture by it for his invitation.  He thought it was so cool.  It took us maybe 5 minutes, I didn't plan a special outfit for him, we just stopped by and took some fun pictures.  It really don't have to be complicated.

Then I added the wording, saved the files to my computer and texted them out to family and friends.  I got several compliments on the invitations.

3. Make Your Own Treats

You can save big $$$ by making your own birthday desserts.  None of my kids love cupcakes so I just usually let the birthday boy or girl pick their favorite desserts.  Fletcher requested brownies, chocolate chip cookies and I added in some chocolate dipped pretzels.  I picked out the green, yellow and brown M&Ms to go with my theme.  The desserts turned out great!

4. Edible Favors

You can't go wrong with edible favors.  We grabbed Fletcher's favorite treats - found great deals at Sams and Walmart and packaged them up.  We added key chain compasses from Amazon and found lots of camouflage party items on clearance at Hobby Lobby.  I didn't add any bows bc boy party and Fletcher was thrilled to hand these out.

5. Free Greenery

I wanted something fresh and something green for the tables, but I didn't want to buy fresh flowers.  Green roses just didn't seem to go with the army guy theme.  We have boxwood bushes and I got to thinking that Boxwood bouquets would be perfect for the tables!  I used a set of my favorite vases, cut enough branches to fill each vase and they looked perfect.  Fresh, green and went perfectly with our theme.  My husband wasn't thrilled with me trimming the bushes, but if you trim bottom branches that are close to your house, no one will ever notice you gave your shrubs a haircut.

6. Decorate with Toys

I borrowed Fletcher's favorite army guys and their vehicles for decorations.  Olive set up all the army guys and everything looked cute with the army guys in groups of 5 (because Olive said that's how they had to be since Fletcher is turning 5).  She's the best party helper!  I picked up the camo tanks at Dollar Tree along with some more bags of army guys.  We used them for the party and then added them to his stash of army guys afterwards.

I've done this same thing for a dinosaur party, bunny party, LOL doll party, Princess Sofia, etc.

I got a mix of things on Amazon, Walmart, Hobby Lobby and Dollar Tree.  I'll link anything I can below with affiliate links from Amazon in case you've got someone who'd love an army guy party :)