Wednesday, January 09, 2013

A Frugal Fourth Birthday.

My daughter turned 4 on Monday, so we celebrated her Birthday over the weekend. When I asked her what kind of party she wanted, we settled on Strawberry Shortcake. It's one of her favorite shows to watch, and we both thought it would be cute. If you know me at all, you know I love the challenge of spending as little as possible on Birthday parties, but still making them fun. Here is what I came up with!

We put up red balloons and pink streamers from the grocery store.
 For their activity, I found some free printable coloring sheets from various websites that they were able to color and cut.
 I scored when I found this free printable banner online. I used cardstock leftover from our homemade wedding invites, and strung it up with yarn from my craft shelf. The number 4 I printed on cardstock as well, then colored it with marker. The pictures on either side are cut out from the cover of an old strawberry shortcake coloring book.
 For the cupcakes, I printed tags I found online and taped them on colored toothpicks. The frosting is homemade and the cake mix was from Gleaner's. I blended some defrosted cherries in with the liquid for the cake mix. They turned out moist and delicious!
The other online printable I found and printed on the cardstock was a pattern for a birthday hat. I used the colorsaver setting on the printer to save on ink.
 
Charlotte had a wonderful Birthday party for very little out-of-pocket cost! One happy girl and one happy mama :)

What are your favorite frugal party ideas?

2 comments:

Melanie said...

Cute ideas :) One of my girls had a strawberry shortcake party. I think it was Kayla. I can't remember exactly what we did, but we still have the plastic cake topper in the kitchen drawer with the candles and other decorating stuff. I think I may have stuck it on one of Kariinne's cakes too.

A money saving thing I did a couple of years ago was I made my own "Edible Arrangement" Karinne doesn't like cake anymore and wanted fruit instead. I was going to purchase one, but they are really expensive, so I just made my own using wooden skewers and sticking them in the bottom of a paper cup that I placed in a sturdy vase. I topped the skewers with some paper folded over the top I had stamped with birthday wishes :)

Robyn said...

Beautiful! Happy Birthday to your daughter! The decoratons were very cute and she look very happy and that's all that matters!