Everyone loves birthdays right? But how do you make your kids feel special on their birthday when you are on a very tight budget. If you are like me and don’t have a free-flowing endless cash flow-coupled with kids who have birthdays literally 3 weeks a part; then you probably get antsy like I do when their birthdays approach. Well this is the issue with Andy and Sunshine. Their birthdays are very close, and even though we make decent money-I always seem to fall short around their birthdays no matter how much they plan. I can’t even began to tell you the last time they had a party-it’s been years. But every year I always try and do something special, whether its an outing or Sunshine having a sleepover with her friends; we still do our best to make their birthdays memorable.

Now because I own an art studio-and one of our “packages” is an Art party, you would think this would be an easy fix. Well it’s not. My kids are at my studio all of the time, and well they are tired of doing art-just because. So what’s next?

 So as an example,  I am going to use Baby I’s birthday this past December for an example. Granted now it was her first birthday and we probably didn’t need to go all out anyway-which we didn’t.  But we made the most of her 1st birthday, and it was amazing and the most we spend was $20.

We used decorations from the Dollar Tree. I lucked up and found these awesome princess table things (I have no clue what they were called),  and they were only a $1 each. To me that is a major, major score. Next we decided not to buy any special food. We had a little cook out instead. And we didn’t need to do any extra grocery shopping, because we pretty much had everything (for some reason we keep burgers in the house).  The only thing extra we provided were drinks. Which we were able to score from Dollar General (not to be confused with Dollar Tree).

Lastly, there was the cake. And we lucked up on that as well. I was in the store looking for a cake. Baby I loves Minnie Mouse; While standing at the bakery, a lady came to pick up her order, but completely freaked out, because she claimed the Minnie Mouse cake isn’t what she wanted. And totally spazed on the bakers and store manager. After the woman was escorted out (seriously it got that bad), I said that I would buy the cake because it was my daughter’s 1st birthday and I haven’t had any luck and it was actually perfect. Get this they only charged me $3 for it. And they through in a few staples for the party (chips, paper plates, napkins). So needless to say-that was an awesome right place, at the right time.

But in case you don’t have that kind of luck (and it rarely ever happens), If you need a cake, you always try contacting a local culinary school or program to do one for you. I actually did this one year and the cake turned out great! Plus it was about $15 for a full sheet cake, and you know if you purchase it in the store it would be a lot more. I did purchase the kit (Toy Story), but it was only $4 off of ebay.

Even though I used a 1st birthday party as an example, this can pretty much go for any kids birthday party (adults are a whole different story).  What types of money saving tips do you have for your little one’s birthday? I would love for you all to share!