Brian’s Birthday Party

Today, we had a birthday party for Brian’s 5th birthday.

I’ve decided that an hour and a half is plenty of time to hold a birthday party for little kids. During this time, we did the following:

– played with the party blowers – 5 minutes
– played on the swingset – 30 minutes
– played duck duck goose – 15 minutes
– played hot potato – 10 minutes
– played freeze dance – 10 minutes (you dance when the music is on and freeze when it stops)
– sang “happy birthday” – 1 minute
– ate cake – 10 minutes
– opened presents – 10 minutes
– kids played with gifts and went home – 25 minutes

I also learned that just because you have a “themed” party (i.e. Transformers was the theme this time), it doesn’t mean you have to buy all “themed” party supplies. I found colored plates at Wal-Mart for $1.00 for 20 small yellow plates and $1.00 for 20 small blue napkins. I bought a tranformers tablecloth for a few dollars, some transformers blowouts for a couple dollars, and some transformers masks for a couple of dollars. At the last minute, I also spent $0.99 plus shipping for a hanging Transformers Happy Birthday sign, some streamers, some blowouts, cake topper, and some unopened Transformers plates.

I made the cake by hand and gave the kids gogurts to snack on when they first arrived at the party.

I thought I had purchased goodie bags, but when I went to fill them this morning, found that I HAD NOT purchased them yet, so I turned to Ziploc for help. I used the sandwich sized bags and filled them with mini oreos packs, a box of raisins, a bag of Scooby Doo fruit snacks, 3 miniature sized candy bars, 2 smarties, and some army men! The kids loved it!

A successful party for under $30.00 (including food and party supplies)!