How to Throw A Frugal First Birthday Party

My son is turning 1 next week and so we're throwing a birthday party for him. Birthday parties can get really expensive really quickly, but by planning way ahead (I chose my theme, Construction, at least 6 months ago) I was able to shop after holiday clearance sales and create a cute themed party at a low out of pocket cost.

The Food
I decided to have the party in the morning for "cake and ice cream" so I could keep my cooking stress level to a minimum and actually talk to our guests (Ok, really -- the University of Michigan v. Ohio State football game is that day and I want to catch at least SOME of the game!).

The menu includes homemade cinnamon rolls, sour cream coffee cake (a recipe from my mother-in-law) and cheesy sausage muffins. We'll be offering pumpkin spice lattes, orange juice, and water to drink. I have all the ingredients for all the above in my pantry and stockpile. I only had to buy the OJ!

The Cake
For cake we'll have a Dirt Cake with a little Tonka dump truck on top. The ingredients for the cake were the most expensive part of the entire party (hello, OREOS?!?!). I should have bought the seasonal Oreos earlier in the year, but I forgot! I still can't decide whether to bake a little cake for the birthday boy or not!

The Loot

I saw these buckets and eggs at Sam's around Easter and went back a few weeks later and got them at 75% off (probably around $2 each). The buckets will be used to serve food and the eggs will go in the goody bags for the kids.



I bought the blue take out containers as goody bags on clearance after the 4th of July.

The pumpkins are bubbles I purchased after Halloween along with the small container of Play-Doh which were intended for Trick or Treaters. I purchased the small Velveteen Rabbit books on clearance LAST CHRISTMAS! They are all for the goody bags.

The Tonka coloring books were at the dollar store and have stickers to decorate the goody bags, posters to decorate the house and the kids can color at the party and take the books home with them. SCORE!

The Paper Supplies and Decorations

I bought the paper supplies in orange (for construction!) after Halloween. We have balloons and streamers left over from Ella's 1st birthday over 3 years ago so I'll use those up to decorate along with the posters in the coloring books and reusable "Happy Birthday" banner I got for free from Vista Print (they offered a free banner so I made a Happy Birthday one!).

That's it! We're all ready to go. I'll do some of the baking earlier this week and freeze items until the party day. I'll post party pictures next week so you can see the end result of all my months of planning ahead!