A Baseball Birthday On The Cheap

My son’s 4th birthday was last weekend.  We love to celebrate birthdays with a party but try to do it as cheap as possible while still serving food.  This year we did a baseball theme.  I already had some decorations from a previous birthday party and my husband, had a good eye the previous weekend and noticed that the birthday banner at our nephew’s birthday party last weekend was baseball themed so he asked if we could borrow it.  We served BBQ’d hotdogs and lemonade, and my mom brought a potato salad.  We also had chips and dip, cupcakes and ice cream– most of which I got on sale with coupons (I probably could have done better in this department if I had planned better).  Cups, plates, napkins, forks etc I either already had or picked up at the dollar store.

Baking a cake or cupcakes yourself is almost always much cheaper than buying one, plus it’s sort of a tradition in our family for me to bake the birthday dessert.  Jackson really wanted an actual cake but I talked him into cupcakes which I arranged in a circle, frosted them white and used red frosting to make the stitching. For favors which we sometimes forgo to save money, we did peanuts and Cracker Jacks.  I got 25 boxes of Cracker Jacks for around $10 (free with Swagbucks) and bought a giant bag of peanuts at Costco.  I printed brown lunch bags with the word “PEANUTS” on them, put in a few handfuls then rolled them up and taped them.  We make a “Thanks for coming” sign and put everything in a basket by the front door so that guests could take them on their way out.

We spent about $15 on favors (only $5 after swagbucks). Favors can be a real money pit and in my opinion should be the first thing to go if you are on a tight budget.  They aren’t necessary and the little trinkets usually only get played with for a couple of minutes.  Edible is the way to go!

And that’s it!  We try to keep things simple and keep costs down. How do you celebrate birthdays on the cheap?  Do you have any tips or ideas?  We’d love to hear them!