My middle son turned 4 yesterday and we had a great time celebrating his special day. We are still new to our area so right now our parties are small, but what I want to share most is how inexpensive I was able to keep everything, all while giving my son something memorable and fun!
All of my little minions are huge fans of the Despicable Me movies, naturally this is a great theme because we already had some decor. By using their little toys they have collected, I was able to decorate the table and some of the house. I did all of the decorating the night before, so when he woke up in the morning he was excited to see the "minion invasion."
The minion plates were fashioned from these free
printables! This site has great inexpensive ideas creating your own celebrations. Originally these "minion goggles" were to be fashioned on yellow paper for kids to wear as hats, but I cut them out and used packaging tape to make a custom plate. I then used a permanent marker to add the mouth.
I put the smaller strips of yellow minions (from the same site above) around juice glasses and filled them with my son's favorite fruit, pineapple.
We had "purple minion juice" (purple kool-aid) to drink. I found a great printable
here. There also other places throughout Etsy that offer really nice printable images of almost anything, instantly downloadable at minimal cost. I created the hair myself because I didn't have anything else on hand. Some other ideas for the hair are; purple tissue paper, tulle, or even a purple wig taken apart. I have seen this individually done on each drinking glass or on rolls of toilet paper covered in purple construction paper for homemade poppers or guest gifts.
The main component of any child's birthday party is the cake and my son has been talking about his minion cake for weeks. He wasn't super picky about how it was done. He probably would have been happy with a plain cake and a minion toy sitting on top. However, I wanted to give him something more without breaking the bank and eating up so much of my time. I found this
tutorial and it couldn't have been any easier or straightforward.
For cost and the fact I couldn't find certain things, I tweaked it a little bit. In the tutorial, it asks for you to use tootsie rolls covered in silver sugar to make the goggles. I couldn't find silver sugar and I wasn't about to go all over town to pay a high price for something I was only going to use once. I decided to stick with just the black licorice to create the goggle effect. I also wasn't able to find the licorice in black that could peel-apart, so a great pair of kitchen scissors helped to make the hair. Instead of buying a huge bag of Hershey Kisses to only use 3, I chose to buy the Hershey Drops that are cheaper and in the checkout line. There aren't as many in the bag...........its chocolate and I am just very weak when it comes to chocolate. I also didn't purchase a separate container of blue frosting, I just bought another of whipped frosting and used blue food coloring.
I did go to the local party store to purchase a little bit more decor; a banner, table decor and hanging items. After that I used what I had around the house. Like, my own blue tablecloth, dinnerware, and kids toys.
My son was very specific about how he wanted his day to go; Chick Fil A (mostly for the playground), bounce house (I got free admission tickets from a school carnival back in November, thinking ahead always pays off) and a MINION party!
All in all I spent around $45 for everything we did at home, which included the food.
Yellow plates $2.95
Yellow napkins $2.95
Party store decor $8.00
Printables FREE
Tablecloth FREE
Glasses for pineapple FREE
Pitcher for juice FREE
Cake (everything included) $15
Pineapple $2.50
Ice cream $3.50
Pizza $10
Juice (kool-aid) $0.30
This was just a small gathering for our family but could easily be converted into a larger party still keeping a thrifty price! I love being creative with special days and I am already planning something fun for Valentine's Day.