Who doesn’t love a good birthday party? We invite our friends and family to our home to celebrate our kids’ birthdays. I wish we could do outdoor parties at a park, but both of my kids have winter birthdays.
I’ve become a bit of an expert at decorating without spending a fortune.
3 Budget Birthday Party Ideas
Make a Balloon Banner
This is such a simple, cheap, and impressive decorating idea. I purchase a package of assorted balloon colors from the Dollar Tree as well as a balloon air pump. This is $2 for both items!
How to make a balloon banner:
- Blow up a lot of balloons in any color.
- Take a needle and thread, and run the needle through the balloons below the knot. All of the balloons slide onto the thread which becomes essentially invisible.
- Use tape to hang the two ends of the thread as a balloon banner over our deck door, over a bedroom door frame, on the mantle, anywhere!
Another great perk of this is that you can do this a day or two ahead of time. Get creative with colors of balloons and also sizes of balloons. I like to inflate them to different sizes to create neat designs! Try inflating 10 or more balloons and creating a really big banner full of balloons.
Check the Target Dollar Spot
I purchased the pom-pom garland and gold number balloon on clearance at Target, but otherwise, they would have been $4 total. (I got both items for $0.60!) The best part? The garland is reusable for other events and birthdays too. The gold balloons are also at Dollar Tree. I use this on the mantle or wherever our kids are going to be opening presents. It makes a great backdrop and is also a way to document how old they are in the photo.
Use What You Have
My son recently had an “ocean” themed party. I used his favorite stuffed animals as the centerpiece. He thought this was pretty fun to show off his toys and tell how he received them. I tied a balloon to one of them, placed it on the center of the table, and scattered photos of my son around the animals. The animals are free, the balloon was $3 at Party City, and the photos were really cheap at Walgreen’s. Think of items like toys, vases, pillows, shirts, etc. You can also think about decorations serving multi-purposes. We used a shark beach pail as a chip bucket.
I hope these ideas give you some inspiration for your next party!