Its my Party and I'll cry if I want to...You would cry too if you had organised it all for weeks!!!! (Children's Parties)

Member Name: KELLY170980

Product:	Children's Parties
Date:	28/10/08 (112 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Seeing all those smiles and also how hypo they get and then you give them back...haha!!!

Disadvantages: My house always looks like a bomb site afterwards

I love arranging my childrens birthday parties, and although we do not the parties I organised this year and hopefully some of the ideas may help someone else........

******Little princess party*****

My daughter is only three so she is not old enough to demand that her whole class come and every other child she has ever came in contact with so she just had six friends.

I made a craft table in the garden (it was a hot day in july) with lots of gems/pom poms, glitter, beads etc etc and cut out some crown shape hats from some cardboard i had from some of the presents she had recieved and they spent over 30 mins decorating their own crown and they loved it, and best of all...all the glitter and mess was in the garden so was easy to clean off with the hose.
There lunch consisted of

Little jam and ham sandwich but I had a star cookie cutter which i cut all the sandwiches into those shapes.

They had teddie bear crisps (they were the mopst girly thing I could find)

Cucumber/cherry tomatoes/carotts etc all cut onto stars and diamond and rose shapes

They had pink wafer biscuits, pink angel delight.

Pink milkshake

I made fairy cakes with pink icing and wrote each childs name in white icing on the cakes....and I borrowed one of those posh cake stands from a friend so they had a proper little tea party.

I had a disney princess cd and they had that on and were dancing around the garden...was sooooo cute!!!!

I also made her cake, i just put loads of pink frosting over a normal victoria sandwich recipe and then used little silver sprinkles to put on the words Happy birthday Princess and I found some little disney princess mini figures from the Pound shop and i put them on the top.

Instead of party bags I brought a set of books from the book people for 4.99 and each little girl had a book about a princess, i wrapped them in pink tissue paper and they loved them.
I also wrapped up some jelly babies up in some celophane i had with some curly ribbons (this literally cost me 1.50...but I did have the celophane and ribbons already...still have loads...one day I will use it all...seems to last forever!!!)

Pink ballons and I made my own banners etc and it turned out to be a perfect princess day. (much to the annoyance of mu hubby and son...hehe!!!)



*** Bowling and Cinema party at a bargain cost******

This year with my son being six, I asked him what he wanted to do and he said he wanted to go out with his friends somewhere cool!!!!! Well it was a nightmare as all his mates seemed to be having really posh and expensive birthday parties....believe it or not one of his friends even had a limo to take him and his friends who are SIX!!!!! to the cinema and then on for a posh meal!!!!
Well I was stuck because I'm good at making fairy cakes and making the best out of not a lot of money but I was completly panicking on how I could do this on out budget!!!
Well I needn't of worried....It was cheap as chips to be honest!!!

We went to cineworld on a saturday morning and took them to there £1 showing of Ugly Duckling and then went onto Big Aplle bowling where if you before twelve then you get in for £1 per child, so in the end this cost us 14 gbp for the activities and then we took then over to Mcdonalds and they all had a happy meal (why are they called happy meals??? I hate them but once in a while I suppose does not hurt) so another 12gbp so in total and then got the pack of indiana jones books from book people and they all had one each, the party ended up costing me 35 pounds which I think was not too bad and my son loved it and most all all his friends told everyone what a fantastic time they had....so that made me happy enough.

There are many cost saving things people can do to keep costs down

* make you own invites, really easy and loads of websites that you can print off free invites.

*make your own party favours, whether that be some sweets wrapped in celophane, a book, some bubble and a lolly...but don't go mad.

*Try and things to keep them occupied for eg. a craft table, a make your own dessert table, salt dough, decorate flower pots etc....keeps them occupied for atleast 1/4 of the time you have them.

* Try and make your own birthday cake...it does not have to be perfect even a swiss roll made into a caterpillar...cheap enough. Or make fairy cakes and put a candle on each and then every child gets a wish...... that worked well for my daughters party.

* Most of all take photos...lots and lots of them..... as you can keep them for evidence when they are older of how much trouble you went to for their happiness and then maybe they will not put you in a nursing home and look after you...hehehehe!!!

I hope some of these little ideas can help someone.

Summary: Be inventive...kids are not fussy!!!