The $16.00 Birthday Party

Earlier this summer my son (who just turned 3) went to a fun dinosaur themed birthday party. He left with tons of great toys and had a great time. Since that party, he has talked about his own birthday party, but I knew I couldn't and didn't want to spend a lot of money on this party. I came up with a plan to spend $20.00 or less.

My son loves sports, especially soccer - so he chose a soccer themed party. I was thrilled because we already had some soccer stuff and it would be easy to come up with games centered around soccer.

Here is what we did:
For our first game game we played "Get the Soccer Ball in the Goal" - my version of Pin the Tail on the Donkey. This did not cost anything because I used leftover computer paper from my work and printed soccer balls from my computer I wrote each kid's name on the soccer ball and glued them to their paper sacks that they used for the pinata (see below).I decided to make a pinata in the shape of a soccer ball. I found some great instructions here. It was time consuming, but it was fun and the whole project only cost $2.00 for the crepe paper. I filled the pinata with fruit snacks and rice krispie treats that I had from the Kellogg's deal. The kids all colored their own brown paper lunch sacks to collect their goodies.

Then we went outside played "Kick the Soccer Ball in the Goal" the goal was a big toy tub. One of the three year olds actually made it in! This was also free.

For the cake - I mentioned that I was having a soccer birthday party to many people (putting the word out). One friend offered to make the cake as a gift! It was gorgeous and the kids loved it. If she had not offered, I would have come up with something myself. I paid $1.20 for some Happy Birthday Candles, $1.00 for cups, and $1.00 for plates. I had napkins and plastic forks already.

The bulk of the expenses for the party came from the loot bags. I had some clear plastic bags already, so we filled them with a soccer ball pencil, a soccer ball key chain, a soccer ball plastic maze, and a soccer ball noisemaker. The total for 8 treat bags was about $11.00. As a game, I hid all the treat bags around the yard and the kids had to find theirs.

The party turned out great, and all the kids had a great time. The point of it this post is not for you to copy exactly what I did. The point is to show that with some creativity and using what you have, you can have a fun frugal party (my son is the one in the red shirt, blowing his noisemaker)!