by Ally Hart

Created on: August 27, 2009   Last Updated: August 29, 2009

Birthdays are a wonderful time of celebration as our children celebrate yet another milestone. Another year has passed, and they are a year older. What better way to celebrate than to throw a nice party for our little man or little girl? There are so many things to get prepared for a birthday party from the invitations and decorations down to the cake. Whatever the theme, you can do it on a budget.

Before you go out and start buying a bunch of things for your child's birthday party, make yourself a guest list and send out the invitations. If there are other children from outside your family, such as school, invited by your youngster; make sure to write an RSVP on the invitation with your phone number to confirm.

Once you have the number of people attending, you can organize things like food to serve, beverages, size of the cake, loot bags or thank you gifts and seating arrangements.

Party stores, both online and off, often overcharge on simple things like streamers or balloons. Dollar stores and stores such as Target or Wal-mart are excellent for birthday parties, especially for children who are between the ages of 1 and 6. You can find just about everything you need, such as streamers, themed loot bag goodies, paper plates, and hats. Some even offer helium balloons at a cheap price.

Make sure to get the essentials for your guests as well, like paper cups, paper plates and, above all, napkins. Or paper towels will do, you never know when a mess will happen at a kids' party.

As far as food is concerned, sandwiches such as egg or tuna salad might not go out too well with the little ones, but there are ways around this. Make a mixed platter filled with vegetables, dips, crackers, cheese, meats, etcetera and allow the kids to have fun and make their own plates - kind of like a mini buffet.

Keep the cake simple, if you can. Younger kids will love a home-baked cake or cupcakes just as much as one you could pay for in an expensive bakery. Cake mix is pretty easy to bake and inexpensive as well.

Most children's parties involve games. Recently, shopping for my own child's birthday things, I came across the party section at one particular store and found the prices for the party games quite high. There are many websites online that you can print out beautiful vibrant colourful party games like "Pin the Tail on the Donkey" or "Bingo". You can also create your own bingo boards and use poker chips as tokens.

With a little price bargaining and a little wit, you can sure make your little ones birthday as special as if you maxed out your entire bank account. Enjoy each milestone because next year is a whole new ball game.

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