You know the mom that calls to invite you to the party happening in 2 days because she forgot to send out invitations? That’s me.  This year I decided I was going to plan ahead, and have invitations printed a couple of months in advance.   Then I set a google reminder to mail them a few weeks ahead. It worked!

It might have been more frugal to make the invitations by hand, but for $.09 each and a lot less time I had them printed as photographs and then mailed out in photo envelopes.  (I designed them in powerpoint, my go to graphic arts program.  I can picture all real graphic artists cringing.) The only catch….the invitations came with the wrong date and time, and I didn’t notice it.  My son came home from school telling me that kids thought the party was a week early, so I went to the photo site and looked up the picture I uploaded. It was correct.  I was so confused.

After I heard from a few other families who had the wrong date, I started calling everyone to confirm the date—2 days ahead, just like usual.  One of them texted me a photo of the invitation I mailed out—wrong date and time.  Forehead smack.  I’m still not sure how it happened.

They were all very nice about it, but 3 of the boys could no longer come :(.  I still feel badly about that.

My mom is protective of my health and stress levels, so she came over to help out.  We made 4 target practice games for the first half of the party.  All of these ideas came from Frugal Fun 4 Boys.  I LOVE her site.  The one above is made from a tri-fold board (like what you’d get for the science fair.) I used a package of Dollar Tree Star Cut Outs for all the games.  The inner circles are cut down from the cardboard that was cut out of the window. They are taped to Ikea Smoothie Straws (they are fatter straws) which just happened to slide over the leftover balloon sticks.  You can get more details instructions here.

I used 2 packages of Dollar Tree River Rocks to weight down the bottles.  Then my mom wrapped them in orange paper and taped them with Black Duct Tape.  We stuck on more of the Dollar Tree Stars to give them point values.  The goal was to shoot off the ping pong balls off the top.  This game was easier than it looks and the boys really liked it.  Also, the package of stars is so big that we used one package for all the games and still have more.

The PVC pipe is our ballet barre, which we just happened to have already for the girls. I just taped jute twine to the top of the cup and stuck more stars on them with point values.  The fun is when the cups start swinging and to try to hit them anyway.

The 4th game is made out of file folders.  We stuck them down to a foam core board ($.88 a Wal-mart) so it could be put away and used again easily. Our only regret is not making the cuts in the base deeper so they would stand up on their own.

Decorations were super simple.  I just used the leftover balloon sticks from our Lego Party and made colorful balloon bouquets. Then let the cupcakes, gift packages, and targets be the rest of the decorations.

Target cupcakes.  It wouldn’t be hard to do better.  Darren suggested red and white might have looked more authentic. (I was using up leftover frosting from the fridge.)

Before the guests arrived, we filled each gift bag with 30 extra darts (from ebay, similar here.) I took the time to write each boys initial on the tip of their bullet so we could make sense of things when the bullets started to fly.  I’m glad I did!  Each boy also got a gun and took it home as a party favor.  We let them have the fun of opening the package and then put their names on their guns too.

I invited all the boys to come and sit at the table and get instruction on how to aim their gun.  We talked about front sights and how to line it up, then did a demo and had them try it out. (Not all nerf guns have front sights, I’m so glad these did.) Then, I divided the them  into partners and sent each group to a station.

They took turns doing target practice and spotting each other to help add up points.  (The points meant nothing, but it was fun to keep track.)

We spent about 30 minutes with target practice, then went to cake and ice cream and gifts.

Then we moved the party outside.  At this point I was done in.  One of the guests came an hour before the rest–the correct time, (because of the invitaiton snafu) and I thought no one else was going to come.  Then when the rest of the guests came an hour later (to our relief), there was a bit of chaos since I didn’t have a quiet sit down gathering activity, (like the coloring pages at the lego party.)

So, Darren took over the out door portion of the party and I rested.  We cut plastic table cloths into strips and tied them around on of each boy’s arms to create teams.  There was an orange team and a blue team and each had a matching bandana for their flag($1.29 at Hobby Lobby.)  They took their ammo and their guns out back to the school yard/city park that backs up to our back yard.

We modified the rules to capture the flag to incorporate the Nerf guns.  Here were our rules.

1. No head shots
2. If you get shot below the neck you have to go back to your base and sing Happy Birthday to Dub at the top of your lungs before re-entering the game.
3. If you get tagged with hands, you go to the opposing team’s jail and wait for someone to rescue you (your own team member to tag you back in.)
4. You can’t shoot from jail.
5. The goal is to find and capture the other team’s flag and take it back to your base.

A boy we had never met was playing all alone at the school while his mother, one of the kindergarten teachers, worked inside.  I grabbed one of the extra nerf guns and they invited him to play in their game.   They played the game for an hour mixing up teams each time they started a new round.  When the boys finally came inside, they were THIRSTY.  If I had thought ahead about that, I would have had some sport drink ready to go.

P.S.  Those little nerf guns go up and down in price all the time.  They were $5.50 each when I ordered mine and at the time of the article are $2 more.  You can watch the prices at camelcamelcamel and have them email you when the price reaches your target.

This is day 29 of our series 31 Days of Kids and Money

2 weeks ago my 5th child turned 8.  That’s a significant birthday in our family and calls for a big party.  The point of this post isn’t to show off gorgeous photos. (I’m terrible at photography.)  It’s just to show that a lot of fun can be had with a budget.  The guests talked about this party for days even though it’s not Pinterest worthy.

Brandon couldn’t decide what kind of cake he wanted so I used 2 boxes of cake mix, 1 each of chocolate and white for the cupcakes.  I dropped both kinds of batter into each cup and swirled it a bit with a tongue depressor.  The leftover batter went into a loaf pan.  

I used Dollar Tree cupcake liners and flags.  We decorated them with chocolate melts (from Hobby Lobby) done in these lego molds.  I still have plenty of melts leftover for Christmas baking.

Regular sized marshmallows cut in half with scissors were the perfect size for lego bumps on top of the loaf pan cake.  Then I microwaved canned red frosting and poured it over the top for a smooth looking frosting.  It didn’t turn out as pretty as the tutorial, but it was really tasty. My Mom had the lego shaped birthday candles in her stash.

We bought a food coloring pen from Hobby Lobby (with a 40% off coupon) to draw the faces on these lego head marshmallow pops. I used this video for instructions:

The pen kept getting junky and didn’t want to write smoothly.   We were going to use the same pens on the cake plates (yellow square plates from dollar tree) to turn them into lego faces.   It just beaded up and wiped off.  Then we noticed that our Sharpies were labeled non-toxic.  We used them on the plates instead of the food coloring.  It looked really good.  I was afraid some of it would come off on the ice cream after it melted into the plate.  It didn’t.

We decorated with a package of yellow balloons and a Dollar Tree Balloon marker–those work really well and don’t smear. Dollar Tree sells packages of single color balloons 15 for $1.  Wal-mart has much better quality balloons 12 for $.97.  The boys made vases out of legos to hide the floral foam we stuck the balloon picks into.  I purchased these balloon picks to save a bundle on helium.  They are reusable and can be cut into scissors to whatever length you need. We now have a lifetime supply.

I set up the table with yellow (Dollar Tree) cups decorated with lego faces and filled with crayons, and printable mini-fig pages.  The box in the middle holds a pile of legos waiting for the next game.

As the kids came in they decorated their page while they waited for the other guests to arrive.  Then we hung them on the wall with painter’s tape.

To set up our next game, we had bowls full of random lego pieces.  We dumped the crayons out of the yellow cups back into our crayon box and gave each guest a straw.  They had 30 seconds to see how many lego pieces they could move from their bowl to their cup with just their straw and breath.  We played several rounds.

Time to get the partiers up and moving.  I passed out a blank sheet of paper and had them number it from 1-13.  Earlier that day, Mom and I hid 13 paper lego men around the house.  (We used this template)

Each man had a word or two written on him. The kids had to find the men, write down the word and leave him there for someone else to find.

When they were done they unscrambled the words to find the scripture:  “This is the Day that the Lord has made.  I will rejoice and be glad in it.”  It was harder for them than we thought it would be.  Next time we’d number the men so they didn’t have to unscramble.

After that we played “Create That.”  We unzipped the big box of legos in the center of the table and then gave them a couple of minutes to build their interpretation of:  a duck, a car, a plane, a spaceship, a robot, and a boat.  At the end of each time limit we showed each person’s creation, said something encouraging and took a picture of him with it (on my mom’s camera.)

Then it was time for cake and ice cream.

And then presents

Then we handed each guest his own gift, wrapped in a Dollar Tree gift bag (3 for $1) with cardstock circles glued on to make it look like a lego.  

I printed the circles on the computer so I didn’t have to trace a template hundreds of time.  It went pretty quickly.

Each bag had a small 3 in 1 lego kit and a small bag of lego shaped candy.  I just put it in snack sized baggies without a fancy label or anything.  The kids loved it anyway. They spread out and built their lego kit while waiting for the parents to come.

There were a few times the kids got crazy, trying to sit on the table or running across the back of the furniture, but for the most part it went really smoothly.   Here’s the breakdown of our budget–the printing costs on the invitations included shipping and invites for his brother’s party two weeks later.  I made up a .jpg and had it printed as a photo at Wal-mart.com.  Then we mailed them in photo envelopes.  It was easy and they were very expensive looking.

The most expensive part of the party was the lego set party favors.  We ordered them directly from lego.com.  At the time they had the best price between Target, Amazon, and Ebay.

This is day 28 of our series 31 Days of Kids and Money

There are strong feelings on both sides of the issue of whether kids should have cell phones or not.  At this point only our oldest has a true cellphone.  She’s had it since her 13th birthday (almost 3 years ago.)

At the time all the kids were going to school together and were in the musical staying after school for a different length of time each day.  We found ourselves often wishing that they were easier to get ahold of.  For her big birthday gift, we bought her the cheapest phone we could find and added her to our monthly bill for $5 a month.  Life was instantly better for us.   The best part was the texting.  All of a sudden the teenage awkwardness between us was gone and we could communicate.  She texted me from her friend’s house just to say, “I love you.”  And I dropped her notes throughout the day just to say, “God made you special and I’m glad you’re in our family.”

Now that she’s older we realized it would be handy for her to have a smartphone where we could share the family calendar and she could access Facebook messages from her choir and youth group.  A friend told us about Swappa, a reliable website for buying used phones.  The phones are guaranteed to work and to not be stolen. She saved up her money from mowing lawns and babysitting and bought the exact same phone I have for 50% less.  We didn’t activate her 4G network with our cellphone company (we use T-mobile because they are the best value for our area) but she can use those features anywhere there’s wifi: home, school, most restaurants and her friends’ houses.

The other kids have been eyeing Heidi’s phone since the day she got it.  It was easy to tell them no when they were little, but they are getting older and going in different directions.  We decided it would be nice to communicate with all the teens when they are working or at school activities and need rides. (Plus it’s a motivating thing to take away if they’re naughty, lol.)

When Heather and Caleb started their businesses and saved up their money to buy an ipod, we looked into cheap ways to get them phone access.  Turns out there’s a magic jack app for iPods.  iPods are about $100 less than iPhones, but can be turned into phones with wifi access with the Magic Jack app.  The app itself is free, and it only costs $15 a YEAR to get them their own phone number with unlimited calling and texting capabilities.  We went that route for those two kiddoes.

We looked at other options such as prepaid cell phones, but since the kids usually aren’t places where there isn’t wifi the Magic Jack was the best option for us.  There’s one more option, Ting, that I haven’t tried yet. My friend Kristen from Frugal Girl says it’s great.  It’s might be a way for you to turn your entire family phone bill into $21 a month.

What do you think about kids and cellphones?  Do you know of another way to save?

This is Day 22 of our series 31 Days of Kids and Money