This Party Cost W#@T?!?!

Over the course of our lives most find themselves either drooling over extravagant parties we attend, throwing them ourselves, or honestly being the depressed that feel inadequate because a party at all seems completely out of reach.

Sadly I’ve been all three, but even at my most extravagant it was no MTV’s “My Sweet Sixteen”! I think as human beings it is in our nature to be envious at some time or another of what we’re not able to do or have but honestly I’ve really come to learn and live by it’s presence not presents that is most important and memorable.

Now as most of you have deducted I am speaking of the parties I throw for my children but this isn’t just about children’s birthday parties. It is a method I truly try to follow for anything I put together. Whether it be a birthday party, holiday party, or just a get together for any various reason I always set myself a max budget of what I can or should spend.

In the past I would buy my children as many presents for their birthdays as I would for Christmas but the party itself would be very low key and inexpensive.

Over time I learned how to balance the 2. Having an inexpensive venue with only one present that they had really been wanting (as long as it was reasonably priced) but adding in fun in various other ways.

Do I stick to the same budget every year? No! And the reason for that is because circumstances change. I might have more/less than I had the previous year to facilitate the event. But if it is a year that you have less don’t let that bother you! Children may remember big huge parties but what they will remember from each and every birthday is the fun they had and how special they felt, NO MATTER THE COST!!!

So as I commented on in my very first post, a very dear friend of mine had been struggling with having to throw her child a very VERY inexpensive birthday party for the first time. She was so used to being able to go all out in her eyes for her child that she honestly couldn’t see past the dollar signs.

And with that, birthed my blog! 🙂 I’ve gotten so many compliments over the years from family and friends saying they would have to start getting me to plan their kids parties because I single handily plan and put together my children’s parties from top to bottom; and they turn out pretty darn cute if I do say so my self!

To me a party doesn’t have to mean allot of people, either! It can be intimate and personal as well if you are on an even tighter budget, not near many people you know, or you just simply want it that way.

In these posts I am going to give you examples of what you can get for just a DOLLAR!!! That’s right people I said $1! And ways to incorporate them into a fun and memorable party.

I have too much to share to put it in one post so I’ve decided to break it up, and in each post I’ll have a randomly chosen request from the previous posts comments/messages and incorporate tips specific to that request. So please feel free to comment or shoot me a message with something you’d like to have help on. A fresh set of eyes and ideas is never a bad thing.

Now, I know not everyone lives near a Dollar Tree but for those of us that do we know what a godsend it is! But for those of you that don’t do not get discouraged because this is just a how to! You can take these ideas and run with them!!! Go to goodwill, search on craigslist, hit up garage sales, etc etc etc! If there is a will there is a way! lol

So let’s get started:

What is the most important part of any birthday? The cake!!!

At my Dollar Tree they have cake pans…

…and these adorable individual cupcake carriers! On that special day give that birthday girl/boy their very own cupcake in the only special cupcake carrier! It is only a dollar but that little gesture will make them feel so special!

Now my DT doesn’t carry the cake mixes and icing itself but you can go to any store and get just about any original flavored cake mix for right around a dollar and maybe let the icing be your splurge and get one of those flavor yourself kits.

Or if you’d like to involve the birthday girl/boy you could do what we like to do in my household and get a classic white cake mix and then let them personalize it with their choice of colors in food coloring or make a poke cake with their favorite flavor of jello. Then instead of traditional icings we use whipped cream (which can also be colored with food coloring).

These are inexpensive ways of killing not two but three birds with one stone! The cake is taken care of, your child gets a fun input on his/her birthday (not to mention it’s more memorable), and it’s an activity you can have the whole party join in on if you decide to go with cupcakes and divide up the batter with their choosing of color(s)!

That’s my tip for this post. I truly hope it helps some of y’all out as much as it has me  over the course of the last 9+ years! I’ll be back soon with more helpful tips and hopefully some requested ones from followers, and I leave y’all with an example of a birthday cake I did for my son per his request when he turned 6. Can any of you guess what/who it is…

Ok, well let me start off by saying hopefully you all will bare with me as this is my first… REAL attempt at blogging. I’ve thought about it in the past and even went as far as to open an account on a different site, but it never went anywhere. Except straight to the Delete Account button that is.

So, hold on to your seats everybody because I have a feeling this is going to be a very bumpy ride.

I know, I know that was pretty cheesy and cliche but I love my cheesy over used quotes.

So let’s get started, shall we? Before now I guess I just really didn’t know what I wanted to write about. Don’t get me wrong I’ve always written, but that was either my fiction novels or poetry. And yes of course it came from me but it wasn’t ever really… about me, per se.

I am the stay at home mommy/wife of a loving, wonderful, and uniquely crazy household and have been so pretty much since I graduated high school. I didn’t want to do a parenting blog because I feel as though I’m mucking that up much of the time! lol Just like most, but I gotta be doing something right because we all have just enough disfunction for it to be funny 🙂 But what could I write about really if not motherhood or at least something along the lines of pretty much the only lifestyle I’ve ever known?!

So for the longest time I just gave up, so to speak. When it came to any of my writing my number one rule was never to force it. I’ve always known and believed in that when it is ready it will come to me, but when I try to force it would fight back with a fury. Then I get frustrated and wind up with writers block for a very long while. Heck, I’ve been on freeze frame in the sixth chapter of my second novel for years now because I tried to force it for so long! But just as I stayed hopeful for my subject for blogging to come to me, I am hopeful that one day the juices will begin to flow again and the rest of the novel will just flow out as the first did.

Seeing everything in hindsight I can see how I was over thinking everything, which I do sometimes… ok most of the time! But I just didn’t want to be another face in the sea of bloggers. I think I had this ideal that I had to be different in the notion that being different meant writing about something no one had ever written about before. The difficulty in that, in and of itself, is that pretty much anything I really know has been thoroughly covered! lol

So, it has been a while since I dipped my toes in to what seemed like, at the time, a turbulent abyss of pitch black frigid waters. Pretty scary, huh? Maybe a tad bit dramatic! lol But now you can see why I was pretty reluctant to just dive in without a firm grasp on what I was doing in this community.

Fast forward and here we are now. The other night a very dear childhood friend of mine was confiding in me her turmoil over her child’s upcoming birthday. She is in between jobs at the moment due to personal reasons and about to have her second child. So to say money is tight would be an extreme understatement. As an only child her daughter has been pretty well spoiled as most are, but with the birth of her second child fast approaching that puts a halt on that line of action all together. But as a good mother she doesn’t want her first born to feel forgotten or pushed aside because of the new baby.

It is a fine line you have to ride when bringing a new member into the family when there are already children involved.

Even though her sweet daughter has already so maturely expressed that she understands and it is alright, her mother can’t help but to feel guilty she can’t give her the celebration she normally would. I think as parents we want to be rich superheros for our children and even when they are mature beyond what they should have to be we still feel the burden of wanting to pull something out for them against all odds.

That is where I received my inspiration coupled with the compliments I get from family and friends for the ideas I come up with for my own children’s parties. I often become inspired by things I see but I always put a spin on them and make’em my own. And I do it all rather reasonably.

All of this time I was fighting against what I know and who I am because I felt as if I had to be different. But the reality of it all is that we are all different! Yes the concepts might be dangerously similar if not exactly the same but as people we are all different. We think, react, and speak differently. For instance I am a HUGELY geeked out cliche Paranormal Romance reader/lover!!! But not all series or authors appeal to me. Where as you might love to cook but hate to bake, or vice versa. But I digress.

Therefore, I decided to put my OCD to work and blog about what I know and love to do; obsessively plan, organize, and do it all for as little as possible! I have a 5 person household on a single person’s income so I know a thing or two about penny pinching 🙂 But if you’re anything like me I do not have the patience, time, or want for couponing. I have tried my hardest to get into it but I always manage to mess it up somehow, get overwhelmed, or just completely forget about the coupons all together and they just sit in a drawer.

And here we are people, at the point of this very long explanation! My blog is about everything and nothing. I love being a mom, a wife, and a homemaker. I can do anything from climb on top of my roof and patch damage caused by a storm to plan a birthday party for as little as I’m (or whoever I’m planning it for) is willing to spend! All while still balancing family, friends, and just life itself. Does it get chaotic, frustrating, or overwhelming at times? Well hell yes! lol But I wouldn’t have it any other way.

So, write in/leave a comment about what you’d like to see, read about, or need advice/guidance/help with! Because when things get to be overwhelming we tend to overlook the obvious answer and that’s what I’m here for. One compassionate “normal” person to another.