Leo turned 3 on February 25th!
I can't believe he's already 3! Every mom who ever says something about her kid's birthday has to say that right? But seriously. Wow. 3 years.
If you know Leo or have been around him for more than a few minutes you'll know he loves Batman! Combine that with his newfound love of Legos and the Lego Batman movie coming out we decided to do a Lego Batman party!
We are now in our final year of residency (yeah!) so money for extra things like birthday parties isn't abundant, but since we skipped the party last year and Leo is now much more aware of things like parties and actually has little friends - we decided to have a party!
The total cost of the party was really low when compared to having a party at a party place, especially considering we had about 40-50some people and fed everyone lunch! I'd say total I spent around $100 and I'll share what we did.
It was such a fun day and amid all the fun I didn't take nearly as many pictures as I wish I had, but that's life.
The total cost of the party was really low when compared to having a party at a party place, especially considering we had about 40-50some people and fed everyone lunch! I'd say total I spent around $100 and I'll share what we did.
It was such a fun day and amid all the fun I didn't take nearly as many pictures as I wish I had, but that's life.
First, the major expense we were able to avoid was the cost of renting a space.
A couple years ago our church had a big "block party" and the teens built an awesome lego table and people donated legos to the church! When I decided on the theme having it at our church was an obvious choice. Since we are members there was no charge for using the church gymnasium (and all the church's stuff - tables, chairs, etc.) Of course when using something like your church it's proper etiquette (at least I think it is anyway) to drop a little extra in the offering plate on top of your regular tithe. Anyway! Having a party for a 3 year old in a big gym was great! We set up about half of the gym and left the other half open for wild kids to run free! It was perfect!
Next the decorations were practically free. I saved all my cardboard boxes from crackers, pasta, mail, etc. and a friend saved me several large boxes from her office and we covered them in primary colored wrapping paper that I purchased at Dollar Tree, Party City, and Hobby Lobby. I found a large roll of red at Dollar Tree because it was Valentine's Day, smaller rolls of blue, green, and yellow at Party City for .99, and a large roll of good quality black paper at Hobby Lobby for $5 with 40% off coupon!
I cut out circles and glued them to the tops of the boxes to make them look like Lego bricks and used them as centerpieces (but seriously a 3 year old's party doesn't necessarily need centerpieces, lol) and with the black boxes I glued on yellow squares to look like a city skyline.
Other decorations were things we had at home - Legos!
Walmart carries Lego themed plates, napkins, cups, etc. for only .99 each! And I used the plastic cups McDonalds gave out in their Happy Meals as a holder for forks and spoons!
One thing I did spend a little money on was silicone Lego brick and men shaped molds! I found a set of 8 on Ebay for $12! I had the intentions of making crayons and chocolates and then decided on just crayons because I didn't want kids to get confused and eat the crayons! ha!
Thankfully I changed my mind because I found that after I used a mold for crayons the wax was very, very, very hard to remove entirely so the chocolate probably would have tasted like wax.
I tried a couple different methods of making the crayons but the best was melting them in the molds in the oven. I bought about 4 boxes of 48 crayons at the Dollar Tree, removed the papers (it is definitely easier to do if you soak the crayon in water for a couple seconds first!) and broke them into pieces, lined them in the molds, placed them on a cookie sheet and put in the oven at about 200-250 (I'm not big on specifics, haha) until they were totally melted - maybe 10 or so minutes. Then let harden on the counter until solid and then put them in the fridge to cool them completely.
They turned out so cute and was seriously one of my favorite parts of the party and planning!
I printed off a couple different coloring sheets on my home printer (so yeah no idea how much that cost.... but like paper and ink we already had you know) of Lego Batman and of a plain Lego man and scattered some different shapes and colors of the Lego crayons on the table.
I also put a few crayons in little clear bags (40 for $1 at Dollar Tree) and gave those out as party favors.
The majority of my party budget of course went to food. I invited A LOT of people to the party. Man, kids parties are hard. First of all we had it at our church and we have so many friends and people we love at our church so they all got invited. Then I have a lot of friends from my mops group and that's the bulk of Leo's friends so I invited just so many people. I didn't get a final headcount but I think we had about 50ish people there!
A couple years ago our church had a big "block party" and the teens built an awesome lego table and people donated legos to the church! When I decided on the theme having it at our church was an obvious choice. Since we are members there was no charge for using the church gymnasium (and all the church's stuff - tables, chairs, etc.) Of course when using something like your church it's proper etiquette (at least I think it is anyway) to drop a little extra in the offering plate on top of your regular tithe. Anyway! Having a party for a 3 year old in a big gym was great! We set up about half of the gym and left the other half open for wild kids to run free! It was perfect!
Next the decorations were practically free. I saved all my cardboard boxes from crackers, pasta, mail, etc. and a friend saved me several large boxes from her office and we covered them in primary colored wrapping paper that I purchased at Dollar Tree, Party City, and Hobby Lobby. I found a large roll of red at Dollar Tree because it was Valentine's Day, smaller rolls of blue, green, and yellow at Party City for .99, and a large roll of good quality black paper at Hobby Lobby for $5 with 40% off coupon!
I cut out circles and glued them to the tops of the boxes to make them look like Lego bricks and used them as centerpieces (but seriously a 3 year old's party doesn't necessarily need centerpieces, lol) and with the black boxes I glued on yellow squares to look like a city skyline.
Other decorations were things we had at home - Legos!
Walmart carries Lego themed plates, napkins, cups, etc. for only .99 each! And I used the plastic cups McDonalds gave out in their Happy Meals as a holder for forks and spoons!
One thing I did spend a little money on was silicone Lego brick and men shaped molds! I found a set of 8 on Ebay for $12! I had the intentions of making crayons and chocolates and then decided on just crayons because I didn't want kids to get confused and eat the crayons! ha!
Thankfully I changed my mind because I found that after I used a mold for crayons the wax was very, very, very hard to remove entirely so the chocolate probably would have tasted like wax.
I tried a couple different methods of making the crayons but the best was melting them in the molds in the oven. I bought about 4 boxes of 48 crayons at the Dollar Tree, removed the papers (it is definitely easier to do if you soak the crayon in water for a couple seconds first!) and broke them into pieces, lined them in the molds, placed them on a cookie sheet and put in the oven at about 200-250 (I'm not big on specifics, haha) until they were totally melted - maybe 10 or so minutes. Then let harden on the counter until solid and then put them in the fridge to cool them completely.
They turned out so cute and was seriously one of my favorite parts of the party and planning!
I printed off a couple different coloring sheets on my home printer (so yeah no idea how much that cost.... but like paper and ink we already had you know) of Lego Batman and of a plain Lego man and scattered some different shapes and colors of the Lego crayons on the table.
I also put a few crayons in little clear bags (40 for $1 at Dollar Tree) and gave those out as party favors.
The majority of my party budget of course went to food. I invited A LOT of people to the party. Man, kids parties are hard. First of all we had it at our church and we have so many friends and people we love at our church so they all got invited. Then I have a lot of friends from my mops group and that's the bulk of Leo's friends so I invited just so many people. I didn't get a final headcount but I think we had about 50ish people there!
I made a facebook event to invite people (oh so saved on invitations too!) and made Lee an admin also and a couple days before the party he got a little nervous and was like uhhh how do you plan on feeding all these people? haha clearly he was super involved in the party planning.
My original plan was just like oh we'll just grab some hot and ready's from Little Caesars because it's cheap, right? Well the week of the party I got an email from Pizza Hut that they had 50% off their entire menu when you ordered online! So I called and confirmed I could order 10 pizzas and get the discount AND have them delivered and they said yes!!
So our menu was pizza, macaroni and cheese (that I made), chips, watermelon, rice crispie treats that looked like Lego bricks, and of course cake!
For drinks I stuck to basics and had tea, lemonade, and water.
2 of my sweet friends actually ended up bringing lemonade and a large fruit salad to the party which was amazing and so helpful! Making a mental note to always ask my friends if they need help with food for their kids parties ;)
And then the other expense was the cake, which I made so it was pretty cheap.
I made a shot in the dark post and asked if any of my friends had Batman cookie cutters and was shocked that one actually did! So another $10-15 saved!
I saw the cake idea on facebook and practiced the technique on valentines day and it didn't turn out too bad so I just went with it! I do not recommend making your kids' birthday cakes. Just buy them at the grocery, haha, but if you're like me and likes the challenge, saving money, and how happy it made Leo.... it was all worth it.
It was such a fun party and we have such great friends.
Stuff like this just leaves me feeling so overwhelmingly thankful.
Thankful for that precious 3 year old boy of mine and thankful for all the people in our lives.
Happy Birthday Leo!
My original plan was just like oh we'll just grab some hot and ready's from Little Caesars because it's cheap, right? Well the week of the party I got an email from Pizza Hut that they had 50% off their entire menu when you ordered online! So I called and confirmed I could order 10 pizzas and get the discount AND have them delivered and they said yes!!
So our menu was pizza, macaroni and cheese (that I made), chips, watermelon, rice crispie treats that looked like Lego bricks, and of course cake!
For drinks I stuck to basics and had tea, lemonade, and water.
2 of my sweet friends actually ended up bringing lemonade and a large fruit salad to the party which was amazing and so helpful! Making a mental note to always ask my friends if they need help with food for their kids parties ;)
And then the other expense was the cake, which I made so it was pretty cheap.
I made a shot in the dark post and asked if any of my friends had Batman cookie cutters and was shocked that one actually did! So another $10-15 saved!
I saw the cake idea on facebook and practiced the technique on valentines day and it didn't turn out too bad so I just went with it! I do not recommend making your kids' birthday cakes. Just buy them at the grocery, haha, but if you're like me and likes the challenge, saving money, and how happy it made Leo.... it was all worth it.
It was such a fun party and we have such great friends.
Stuff like this just leaves me feeling so overwhelmingly thankful.
Thankful for that precious 3 year old boy of mine and thankful for all the people in our lives.
Happy Birthday Leo!
1 comment:
Lego and Batman are classic, familiar favorites - what a lot of fun
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