Ulari Nwaogazie: 7 Cool Ideas to Help You Celebrate Your Child’s Birthday…On a Lean Budget

It’s your child’s birthday coming up soon. You truly want to have a memorable party for your child, but the economics of the purse and bank accounts are currently not adding up. What do you do?
The prospects of organising your child’s birthday party would naturally come with some sighs, deep thoughts, and panic moments and probably depending on your temperament… Sleepless nights! Within all these are key thoughts like, where will the party take place? How many children should you invite? What will be the entertainment? And most of all, how much will it cost?

As a matter of fact, except you so choose to, many people have had children’s party that turned out great without a lot of fanfare or expense.

Here are some cool ideas that can help you to have a child’s birthday on a budget

Celebrate the Birthday at School
You can ask your child’s teacher / school if this is possible and how they would normally have it organised. You can also bake some cupcakes or a home baked cake and bring them to school, including some drinks and little gift(s) for the other children. This way, you avoid hosting a large and expensive party at home.

Invite a Few Friends
Fine! Your child does not want to celebrate the birthday at school, or his/her birthday falls within a period when the schools are closed. Your child can invite a few close friends. It can be organised as a play date or mini party. You can ask your child to limit the number of friends to 5, a maximum of 10. Plan a movie date or pizza. You can also go to a recreation centre (if there is any in your environment).

Make Your Own Decorations
Just in case you still want to have a party, you can also cut cost by making your own decorations using your child’s creativity. You can help your child to cut some paper into interesting shapes. Get some glitter and glue and make drawings to post around to accentuate the balloons and ribbons.

Create Your Own Fun
A low budget party does not mean a boring party. You can play some music, and have a dancing competitions in the living room. If the weather is agreeable, you can play some outdoor games as well such as hide and seek, scavenger hunts etc. In this case you can be as creative as permissible. However, it is important to keep safety in mind.

Offer Mouth Watering and Delicious Dishes
Also, your party is on a budget does not mean that the food should be tasteless and boring. There are so many food choices that you can make without spending a fortune. For example, the classic Jollof rice with chicken and moi- moi (beans cake)! You can also serve sandwiches and cookies.

Go with a D-I-Y Birthday Party Theme
With your child, you can decide on a fun idea for a party and do this cheap at home. Whether the party hosted at home with fun games, or taking the kids outside for an outdoor party games, or set up some crafts for a fun kid’s craft party,  choosing a favourite kid’s party theme and making it a D-I-Y affair can make it much easier on your party budget.

Have a List of Activities Set Up
On a final note, because the attention span of children is quite short, if going with a party at home, it is advisable to have several activities lines up. When the children finish one activity and another one is not coming up in an immediate sequence, they would get bored. You face the risk of having them running all over the place, chasing and screaming and creatively creating all types of havoc and mayhem. You simply do not want that!

I hope these low budget ideas help you, so that you don’t stress but smile.

Photo Credit: Dreamstime | Photoeuphoria