One of the lowest stress parties our kids were invited to was at the school district pool.  The mama didn’t have to clean her house.  She brought cupcakes for a swimming break and sent home movie boxes of candy for party favors. Genius.

The other low stress party we attended was at the roller rink.  Let the kids skate, throw them a cupcake (some rinks include drinks and a snack with the party package too) then send them home exhausted. No cleaning, no clean up.  That’s my kind of party.

The highest stress destination party I’ve seen is at Chucky Cheese.  If you like strobe lights, deafening noise, trying to keep eyes on kids going in all directions at once, helping with ticket exchanges with multiple kids simultaneously, and strangers eating your pizza while you try to manage it all…you’d like it.

I’ve been determined to have a low stress destination party the last few times our kids rolled around to a significant age.  I researched locations and prices and when it came time to book it, I just couldn’t spend the money.  Most of the parties I researched were about $300 and I still had to get my own cake and party favors.   In the moment that was more stressful to me than cleaning my house.  If your budget doesn’t sweat over a $300 party you might feel differently.  Either way is ok.  Don’t apologize if you have a destination birthday party, and don’t apologize for having one at home.

The trend for at home birthday parties has been going OVER THE TOP.  I’m all for taking it down a notch or 200.  The kids don’t care if it belongs in a magazine.  They care if you care about them.  If magazine parties are low stress for you, go for it.  For some people it’s a gift and comes naturally.  There’s nothing wrong with using your gifts to create an incredible event.

My gift is not decorating or crafts or anything like that.  My gift is encouraging words.  The best way I can throw a party is to greet each guest at the door by name, be completely overjoyed to see them, and then stay and hang out and play along with the kids.

This month, we found ourselves in the unusual position of having 2 birthday parties within a week of each other.  With our “significant” age party rule, that has never happened before and it won’t again.  It was super fun and exciting and also potentially rough on the budget.  I tried to talk the brothers into having a joint birthday part at the archery shop.  Our friends own it and if I’m going to spend a wad on a party I’d feel great about giving it to them.  The boys would have had to cut their guest list to just 3 friends each (or ban brothers and sisters from coming along.) One brother was all for it, the other was not at all.  He had his heart set on a lego party with friends, cousins and family. The idea of giving that up brought him to tears.

So I invited each son to come and cuddle up with Pinterest and help me gather ideas for their parties.  To keep things low stress I limited the parties to 2 hours each, and scheduled them for in between meal times. I set a budget of $150 per party, which was the same if they had shared a party at the archery shop.  We ended up spending much less than that, saving around $90 overall.

Here’s how we broke it down for the lego party:

and the Nerf War Party

I decided instead of buying a bunch of little trinkets and candy for party favors that we would buy the kids a small gift for around $5 each and send something home that they would treasure for awhile.  I purchased the lego sets directly from lego.com (they had the best price and selection after I searched all around.) And I bought the 3 shooter nerf guns from Amazon. We used them for target practice, in the epic capture the flag nerf gun party, and then they took them home. I’ll give details on the lego party tomorrow and the Nerf gun party after that.

This is Day 27 of our series 31 Days of Kids and Money