Simple Birthday Party

A great birthday party doesn't have to include everyone you have ever met and pony rides for all of the kids in the neighborhood. I assure you, no long term psychological damage will occur if you hold a less elaborate birthday celebration. Young children aren't going to remember the party later in life. For me, the most important consideration for my son's recent second birthday party was how much is too much for him to handle.
The truth is my son is a party animal. He doesn't stop, and forget about nap time or eating for that matter, if there are people around he doesn't see all of the time. A birthday blowout would look like this: 1 cranky child who won't eat even though he is hungry and won't nap even when he's sleepy. Result = no fun.
My second consideration was the fact that we live in a house far too small to accommodate all of our family, so we needed some alternatives. We also live close to my husband's family, but about 60 miles from my family. Our solution, two smaller parties hosted at the homes of both sets of grandparents. Two parties you say, that means two times the cost right? It doesn't have to be. Here are some ideas for keeping it simple regardless of the number of parties you have.
1. Invite only the crucial people. For us that meant my husband and my immediate families only.
2. Look for a relative who is willing to help with either a hosting location or some of the food and take them up on the offer!
3. Those invitations, make them by phone, email, Facebook, or any free service of your choosing. Save your cents for something other than postage.
4. Keep the menu simple- and use the ingredients that are on sale at the time of your party. Our son's birthday was close to Easter so we served ham.
5. Decor can be simple as well. We used Thomas themed dessert plates and napkins for the Thomas cake (which I made myself- another post later) and that was all.
6. The gifts- we try to make sure that whatever we buy will be something that will last and will be used for a few years. A character themed gift may not be what he's into in a few months so we look for more lasting gifts. This year for example we bought a mini-trampoline with an enclosure. It has a weight limit of 100 pounds, so he will be able to jump on it well into grade school. Plus, it was on sale with free shipping to the local store.

Cut trash bill in half

One way to keep the family budget on track is to cut the trash bill in half. Is that even possible you ask? It is and it did not require massive lifestyle changes in our world. Here's how we did it. First, we take advantage of our community recycling drop off center for our recyclables. This leaves us with very little trash to take to the curb. Most weeks we have a bag of diapers and another bag of trash. Our trash service allows us to have far more trash than this each week. We decided to split the trash service and the cost with my brother-in-law's family who live on the same street. We started this arrangement four years ago, and it has worked well. Each year we both save about $125 by spilting the cost of the trash bill. It does mean that someone will have to bring their trash to your house, though so you will probably want to share trash service with someone you trust in your neighborhood.