I recently had the task of planing my daughters 7th birthday for her and 11 of her friends. Here is how I made it look like my husband and I spend a lot of cash with out actually doing it.

Party Favors: I am against giving large amounts of candy or small un-useable toys.

 So to avoid this I went to claires. They were having a 10 for 10 sale. I bought 12 necalaces which retailed orginanlly for $7.00  and 12  lotions and bodywashes which were orgianlly 3.00 a piece.

Each bag cost me $2. I bought tinkerbell paper lunch bags to put the favors in a 10pk was $1 at the .99c store.

For the two boys that came. I bought each of them a $2 chalk bucket from Michaels.

Games

We did a potato sack race for prizes (Two winners) (sacs were purchased at wal-mart (5.99) as were the suncatcher making kits which were on clearance in the craft department for 2.00.

We made a home made pinata, water-baloons, and large batch of bubbles. ( pinata I saved candy from halloween and parties my kids had been to in a ziplock bag which i used to fill it)

Food/drinks

All the food was homemade.(Picked things I knew the kids would like but so would the grown-ups) Recipes came from foodnetwork and marthstewart.com. (Huge hit). I made cupcakes instead of cake. One of the girls told me it tasted just like store bought.

We used bottled beverages instead of canned. No juice boxes, Just bottled apple juice. We also made homemade sangria for the (grown-ups). 

Our splurges

Decorations. We did a Hawaiian theme.(We went to party city and .99c store and spent about $40.00 including a music cd) I got flower necklaces from freecycle!!! Enough for everyone!

I made a happy birthday window clings using  gallery glass. We also bought one of those balloon time helium takes using a 50% of coupon from Michaels.

Invitations

We did evite but we had some picture cards from a pic from the party made from walgreens and sent them out as thank you notes.

Everything was a huge sucess. The adults had fun and so did the kids. It felt great to get the complements from people who thought my husband and I really spent the bucks!

The party cost us much less than it would have to have in any-where else. In Los Angeles where we live the parties at the zoo and other places start at $300.00

Which in my opinion is crazy.

Good luck throwing your next birthday bash!

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