Frugal Birthday Party Fun

What would a frugal birthday party be without some fun and games.

Entertainment - Always make sure you have plenty of party games and activities ready to keep the kids occupied during the party.

Face paints can be bought quite cheaply these days and if you invite a friend to help you on the day can be a great hit with the children.

picture by tom@hk

Pass the parcel- I know its an old game, but if you make several wrapped up parcels using lots of old newspaper so that it takes ages to unwrap the whole thing, it really does keep them occupied for ages. The contents of the parcel can be quite small and can contain anything from sweets to action figures from cereal packets.

Goodie bags - It has become a bit of a tradition these days to give each child who comes to the party a goody bag when they leave. These can work out expensive if you have 15 children attending. Ideas to make this a more frugal option are:
- Make the bag yourself using hand decorated paper bags (you could even get your kids to do this for you in advance.
- Every bag could be personalised with the child's name.
- Bake cookies to put in the bag
- Take cheap Polaroid pictures of each child with the birthday boy or girl and put these in the bags.
  Print off a few pictures to be coloured in (there are websites that allow you to do this for free) and put them in the bag with a few crayons.
- Instead of sweets you could make your own chocolate covered rice crispie crunches.

Frugal Adult Birthdays

Being an adult myself (or so they tell me), a frugal birthday party has been a part of my life for some time now.

In fact as I have become older and having expensive things doesn't seem as important any more, it has become easier and easier to have a cheap but fun birthday. Time and effort is the secret here, they mean so much more and comes naturally for a frugal living.

Make a birthday card - whenever I receive a handmade card from my partner it means so much more and I never throw them away.

For a frugal birthday party - Don't you find that adult parties can be a bit boring, you know what I mean? All standing around talking politely as you gradually get drunker and drunker.

Well I like to invite friends over for an adult kids party (bring a bottle of course), where we all pretend we are kids again and play silly games and eat kids party food. Its so much fun and cheap too as you don't even have to dress up posh, just silly.