Kid's Parties, to spend or not to spend.

What do you guys do for your kid's birthday parties? Go all out, or keep it to just family?

I have four kids, so we run the gamut. The parties for the littlest two are just family and are low key. My oldest, Zaven, will be 15 and he usually likes to invite a friend or two to the movies, or swimming, and maybe to spend the night afterwards.

Caly will be 12 and for the last several years has had a big party with all her friends. But even though it's a huge event, we work to keep the budget down. We invite lots of kids, tell them to wear bathing suits or old clothes and bring a change of clothes. Then give them each a can of shaving cream when they get here. They empty a whole can ito each other's hair and give themselves mohawks and beehives, then run through the sprinkler and get clean. We also serve a cake made with loads of whipped cream and don't give them silverwear. They have to eat with their hands. Sometimes they make home made play-doh or goop or something like that, as long as it's messy. We spend less than $2 a kids and don't give party favors. Sometimes one or two of them will spend the night afterwards, but only ones that have a good track record of not leaving the place trashed. And we make the ones who stay help clean up any mess from the party. But there usually isn't much, since it's all outside. We hose off the porch and call it clean.

With my daughter (just turned 4), we rented a place where the children could run around and have fun. They have different rooms geared towards different ages so everyone can have fun (even pool tables and video games for the older kids and adults). It's not that bad a price plus I don't have to cook or clean. LOL.

We don't know if we are doing the same thing for my son this year or not. We started having bigger parties for Ceilidh when she turned 2, but we don't know if we will have the time for one for Zach (son who will be 2). We'll probably do something even though Zach won't care/notice the difference, but I will. It will just probably be smaller scale, or a month after his birthday.

oooo how awesome! I wish my daughters birthday was in warm weather, that sounds like soooo much fun. My house is too small for a bunch of kids and we always have to have her B-day parties somewhere else. Well this year was the last straw, I am not having B-day parties at "Places" anymore. I need more creative ideas. Hope more people say what they do in not so warm weather. Great post thebigscott!

Mine get cake, icecream and presents at my house or my great aunts house. The guests include grandparents, great grandparents and other adults, If thier grandkids are in (my kids cousins) they come, but its no frills, no bunch of party favors, and the kids are able to concentrate on playing with new toys or visiting with the older family members. ( we all live within a 1/2 mile of each other but dont always get together).

I do this for 2 reasons.

one. I dont like kids. period.
two. its too much money. I only have one summer birthday, so they would be inside the whole time and my house is SMALL. plus I live so far out in the country lots of folks might not want to come.

I fiqure I spawned enough kids for them to have playmates. I dont need extra ones brought in. LOL

For my oldest we always did a big party with all of our family and friends, if I only invite local family it is 60+ people. NOw that she is almost 20 we do a more low key, dinner and a movie, cake afterwards type thing. Besides, when you move out I stop spending money on you.
For my 10yo we will do a swimming party, alot of family, friends etc. It usually turns into an all day event since we generally boil crawfish or BBQ, pinata, cake ice cream, etc, same thing we did for the oldest. Both my kids bdays are in July( 9 years, 3 days apart), so 2 weekends in a row DID get expensive, but oh well.

For my nieces who live with me, and will be 4 I am going all out ( my sister won't, and who knows where she is anyway). Their bday is in Sept, so we will probably do Chuck E Cheese, that's their fave place at the moment.
My nephews Bday is in dec, on New Years eve, so he always gets a big party...........sort of. He is not actually living with me now, he only does when my Brother works out of town, but we usually do something together, kind of a joint venture.

We have done a lot but I always try to keep the parties to around $150 or less. One year we did build a bear and it was my favorite.. they did all the work. They had a minimum of 6-7 kids and we stuck to just that amount, with coupons and specials, the girls each got to make a bear and pick out on item of clothing. The total was around $120.

Last year we did a spy theme. It was pretty cheap, I made up clues and hid a basket of goodies and they worked as a team to figure out the clues. I bought dark glasses and magnifying glasses at the dollar store and we made up secret agent names so they each had a name tag. It was all pretty cheap (around $50) and they had a lot of fun.. I think we had 7 girls total that time too.

edbson, that is so good of you to do as much for your niece and nephew as you do for your own kids. I admire that a lot, and know it will make such a difference in their lives. Sometimes people differentiate between their own kids and the kids they are parenting who aren't their own and that has always bothered me. If you are responsible for a kid, then they are yours, no matter how they got to be yours.

OK, I just made a slide show of last years pictures. I was too cheap to subscibe to photobucket's pro plan, so there's an ad in there, too. But you'll get the idea.

https://s302.photobucket.com/albums/nn96/thebigscott/?action=view&current=c19673d0.pbw

My youngest turns 3 next month, and were having close family, and renting one of those jumpy things, cause he LOVES them and never gets to really play on them because he's to small..... Were gonna set it up at the BF's house cause he lives in the middle of nowhere and we won't have to worry about the kids getting away from us.....its just gonna be the baby, my oldest son, and then the bf's cousins kid (the oldest one is 7) and then my parents and siblings, bf's parents, and the cousins. So it'll be pretty fun!!

Well, since my kids are 6 and 10 months we don't have a ton of experience in the birthday department but as our son has gotten older we do a large party for his friends then we do a small family only celebration in the park/cookout and join it with his cousins birthday which is jut a few days before then.

My dad, Devon, and I all have birthdays within a few days of each other (Feb 22, 24, 26) so we do a family thing. Usually we order pizza and my dad and I let Dev have his name on the cake. You'd think that a small birthday party in February in Canada would remain indoors, but it just happens that all three of us love the snow so even if no one else will join us the three of us go toboganing in my mom and dad's ravine.
Sam's is in June. Usually the weather is nice enough to have everyone over here for hotdogs on the bbq and a few salads. Nothing fancy or expensive, but the kids like it!