My son’s birthday is in October, but I have to admit, I have most of his party already planned and it is costing me nearly nothing to host. My son, a preschooler who faces delays, rides a school bus to a special program during the week. My son is totally in love with his bus driver and his bus and requested that he have a school bus birthday.
As many of you can guess, there are not a lot of bus birthday party supplies lying around area stores, so this non-crafty mom had to get creative. However, I have found being creative has saved me a bundle on party supplies.
The first thing I will do to cut costs is make my own invitations. I find making your own invitations is more personal and can save you a bundle.
The second thing I did was make my own goodie bags. How I did this was I bought a package of 40 sandwich sacks at the dollar store. I attached bus clipart onto the sack and stapled ribbon that I purchased in an after Christmas sale around the top. The ribbon cost me a quarter during the after-Christmas sales. Typically the goodies inside the bags cost me the most money, but not this year. When entering my local Wal-Mart, I walked into their clearance section to take a peek. I could not believe my eyes. They had shopping carts upon shopping carts filled with birthday party goody bag supplies for 10 cents a set. You could break apart many of the sets and put them in the individual goody bags. At the end of the day when my husband and I sat down and figured out how much it cost us to make and fill each goody bag, we discovered it literally cost us less than 40 cents a child.
My son’s birthday was not the only holiday I was thinking about when I saw the clearance section. I also stocked up for Halloween. We live in a housing area that see massive amounts of children on Halloween. It could cost us a small fortune in candy, but instead we got goody bag supplies broke up the sets and will only end up spending a few dollars on the holiday.
The lesson I have stressed several times in my column is that if you are a little Type A and believe in planning ahead you can save a bundle on items.
Did you know that an area restaurant offers free chips? Did you know that you could get a free book about crock-pot recipes? Make sure you do not miss these deals and other great bargains. Check out and like the Frugal Family Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/frugalfamilycolumn.
Do you have frugal tips you would like to share? E-mail them to localnews2005@yahoo.com.
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