Birthdays and Christmas

It is amazing that October is already here. The girls will have a joint birthday party in 4 weeks! And then Christmas will be 7 or 8 weeks after that. Lots of fun ahead!

Birthdays and Christmas can be really expensive. We decided to go with the 3 present tradition for our kids at Christmas a few years ago and it does simplify things a lot. With birthdays, we try to be simple, too. They get a lot of toys from garage saling during the summer and fun things for homeschooling, so I am thankful for that.

I love Family Fun magazine because it always has such great ideas for making parties fun--inexpensively. So, this is the first of my planning. I had thought of something else to write about, but now I can't remember it =) so I'm going to write/talk through my plans...

Theme: Princess party
Since we don't celebrate Halloween, we make the girls birthday party a costume party every year. Last year we had a Dora Pirate Adventure party.
This year will be princesses. My girls just love to dress up.

Time: 2-3 hours in the morning into lunch. I decided that I want to make special Belgian Waffles and put whip cream on them and chocolate chips. (sort of brunchy) I thought the kids could decorate their own waffles. I'm not sure what this will mean for a cake, though =s

Decorations: Homemade. I don't know what they'll look like yet, but I think lots of shooting stars (pink/white/red)

Plates, etc. I picked up some glittery pink and purple butterfly plates/cups/etc on clearance at Target a few months ago.

Usually, I pick a theme a few months ahead and start gathering things here and there. It helps me find sales and it helps me spread out the cost of the party. I read in one book that a lot of families spend $200-$300 on a birthday party. Wow! I think I figured out that their party last year cost $50-60 at home. We had about 8 kids and had a lot of fun. They found their gift bags in a treasure chest and we had 3 games outside. I made sack lunches for the kids--already assembled--which made things very simple.

Gift bags are an interesting thing. I don't think they used to be a given at birthday parties, but now they seem to be. I want to think of a craft they can make this year that will be their primary thing to take home. I bought a korigami book at the book sale last week about how to make hats. That will definitely be part of it this year--a homemade hat =)

So, those are my thoughts for now...