Budget Birthday

My oldest is turning six next Monday (WHAT?!  How did that happen??), so it's time for a birthday party and all the expense that goes along with it!  Actually, it's time for two birthday parties.  No, I wasn't trying to spend as much as possible.  It was actually my way to reduce birthday stress.  On Saturday we're having the "friends" party at a local park (the weather guy keeps flip-flopping between sun and rain - doesn't he know I have an event to worry about?), then on Sunday we're having the extended family over for a party.  I tried to have both friends and family over at the same time last year and it was just too insane.  My house is in no way big enough for that.  So I thought it would simplify things to have them separately.  Because it's ALL about simplicity......right?

Yes, simple.  Except I had to figure out how to pull off two parties with food, decor, and his presents without spending a ton.  A "save money" type blog I found bragged about how she only spent $300 on her kid's party and that was the cheapest she'd ever gone.  I have to be able to do better than that!  Here's how I did:

My children are very big on their birthday themes, so there was no negotiating there, but I can take the main colors from his theme and buy colored coordinated decor and only a few character items.  I also keep any leftover party items in a box in the pantry and it turned out that we still had enough plates and napkins with our needed colors.  Score!  I am doing goody bags for the kids coming to the "friend" party, but only the goody bag itself has the character theme on it.  I'm filling it with bulk candy and little dollar store random items (bubbles, dinosaurs, stretchy frogs, etc).  Breakdown:

Goody bags: $18.48 

(that's roughly $2.05 per kid)

Decor: $18.37

As far as presents go, we're trying to limit our belongings and he's going to be getting a bunch from other people anyway so I stuck to two gifts: one was bought from eBay at a very discounted price and the other was bought from a store that's going out of business so everything was on sale.  Breakdown:

Star Wars DVD set from ebay: $23.00

Star Wars Book: $12.00  

And then there's food.  Probably the biggest expense of all.  I tried to look up different blogs on cheap foods to have at parties and honestly wasn't finding anything besides "Just give them chips and ice cream".  Um, no.  While that would cost very little, it also makes me look really stingy and/or unprepared.  These people are nice enough to come to a party and bring my child a present, so the least I can do is give them some decent snacks.  So I spent an hour on a "menu" and narrowed it down to reasonably easy, cost effective, and healthy snacks.  I'm also doing the exact same thing for both parties, so I'm just doubling everything.  Any leftovers from the party on Saturday can also be used on Sunday.  One big cost saver: I'm not ordering a cake.  I actually haven't ordered a cake since my oldest's 1st birthday.  I prefer the taste of homemade cakes and there's always too much frosting on the store bought ones.  Yes, he wants a Star Wars cake, but we're going to for coordinating colors and then I'm going to use a few figurines from his Lego Star Wars sets as cake toppers.  It'll be funny and memorable on top of saving me money.  Here's the menu and the cost breakdown:

Menu

Homemade Cupcakes (park)/Cake (home)

Cantaloupe melon balls

Cucumbers, carrots, celery with hummus, ranch dressing, and spinach dip

Crackers

Homemade rice krispy treats

Homemade pumpkin bread

Food Cost

$63.56

Grand total for two parties:  $135.41

I don't know if I could have done any better.  Maybe I could have found an even cheaper way to do goody bags, although I feel like $2 per kid is pretty darn good.  Even so, I still found my heart sinking a little when everything was rung up at the store.  Maybe just because I know we're over our food budget for the month anyway or maybe I was unrealistically expecting to pull off a kid's double party under $100.  I guess that begs the question: Is a $100 kid party (with presents) even possible?

The First Bump in the Road

So I haven't posted in a week here and that's because a massive cold/flu/viral butt-kicking hit our household.  Well, I should clarify that.  It hit me.  The kids didn't get it as bad and either the hubby is breezing by it or it's just waiting to attack him.  But me?  It hit me like a ton of bricks.  And there came the first roadblock in our simplicity plan.

Our schedule got totally thrown off.  My oldest missed one day of school, my husband had to take him and pick him up the other two days (and ran late enough he had to drive him instead of walk the four blocks), the youngest started having potty accidents again, as did the dog.

Meals went out the window.  While we had food on hand, because of illness, only certain things could really be eaten without coming back up.  Which meant two days of grocery store runs for my hubby and he's not the greatest with sticking to a list (although he did get lots of fruits and veggies for a reasonable price).  This means we're way above our grocery budget for the month.

Housework was non-existent.  Anytime I think that I'm not doing enough around here, I should slap myself in the face.  While my house isn't perfect, it's reasonably clean most of the time - meaning that I actually do plenty around here.  But no amount of cleaning and organizing that I've done so far could handle my husband and children having full reign of the house for a few days.  Don't get me wrong though.  My husband really did step up to the plate while I was down and I appreciate it.  He cooked, did dishes, took care of the kids, even started a load of laundry and most importantly, took care of me.

I'm going to add in here that I took a two hour break from writing this to deal with a partial downed tree in my front yard that was blocking the road.  Life really likes to throw interesting things my way.

Anyway, I'm hoping we can get back on track quickly.  We have a birthday party to host this coming weekend and I don't want to go back to my former hosting self of rushing around at the last minute.

The Changes So Far

When I first got the simplicity idea about a month ago, I expected it would take at least a few months to see any sort of difference in our daily life.  But here we are, one month into the idea (and that doesn't mean that everything I've tried so far has been happening for a full month) and I can tell a difference.

I've cleared out a good portion of belongings that we didn't need anymore and that includes some random furniture, freeing up a little bit of floor space.  I've organized a few areas and have been putting things away when we're done with them and if I'm heading upstairs/downstairs, I grab whatever I see that should go with me.  Just these few changes have massively cut down on the amount of time it takes me to clean my house.  I've set up a housework schedule and yes, I actually schedule the housework like an appointment.  I bought a day planner and I write down my housework to be done at a certain time.  Example from the other day:

9:30am-10am: Basic tidying
10am-11am: Clean bathrooms (hey, I have three bathrooms that need to be scrubbed down and it very well might take me a whole hour some days)
1pm: Clean cat box and guinea pig cage

Usually, I won't schedule more than three household tasks (cooking doesn't count) each day.  That way, I'm not overwhelmed with stuff to do and it gives me time to play with my kids.

I've been spending more time with my boys than I ever imagined.  We've been playing games, going to the park more often, and having little baking sessions together.  It's been great and their behavior has drastically improved.  We've also cut down on our TV time because we're spending time with each other instead.

I noticed a huge unexpected difference this weekend as well.  We were having a group from church over for dinner on Saturday evening and normally when we have people over, I'm stressed beyond belief.  Spending an entire week before the get-together making sure my house is JUST how I want it, and when the day comes around, I still end up coming to the door out of breath and covered in sweat because I've been cleaning like a mad person.  That didn't happen this weekend.  At all.  There was no stress.  My house was clean already.  I spent an hour or so on Friday sweeping, mopping, vacuuming, and dusting, but that was it.  I was fresh faced, relaxed, and happy when everyone arrived on Saturday.  When I realized the difference from our past parties/get-togethers, I nearly cried.  What a wonderful, wonderful change it was to actually enjoy having people over instead of worrying about how my home looked.

One month in and we are happier already.  I can't wait to see how things continue to change as we get further along in our challenge!