Magical Birthday Parties on the Cheap

Wow your friends (and save a fortune) with these magical homemade birthday party ideas.

Super-Hero Detectives Birthday

A fun theme for preschoolers who love adventures, mysteries and more!

Invitations

Decorate a card with the birthday child’s fingerprints, add a small magnifying glass and mail in an envelope made from a comic book page. Be sure to ask your guests to wear on old t-shirt or sweatshirt for a surprise birthday activity.

Activities

Cape Decorating: As the guests arrive, have them design their own superhero disguises including attachable capes, headbands and masks. Put out a variety of materials and textures such as assorted fabric remnants, ribbons, sequins, letters, markers, and tacky glue. Attach each cape to the back of the child’s shirt with Velcro-tape.

Mystery Hunt: Before the party begins hide 5-6 clues around your house, backyard, local library or nature trail. Set up a mystery scenario such as a missing stuffed animal. Ask the detectives to help find it by following the clues. The clues will lead the guests to a decorated party space where the “missing” animal is sitting in the birthday child’s chair. Use magnifying glasses, old comic book pages, paper dotted with fingerprints and extra capes and colorful masks to decorate the space.

Menu (food in disguise)

Fruity Nachos, Strawberry Mice and Cheese, hamburgers designed to look like hotdogs, Mommy’s Mini Mummies (pizza) and Baked Potato Boats
Dessert: Brownie cake topped with cheesecake frosting and fruit
Beverages: Superhero Water (sparkling water with peach, grape or cherry syrup)

Favors

The guests will take home the disguises they made at the party.

Home-Plate Baseball Party

Just imagine how happy your little one will be when he gets to host his own baseball birthday party right at home. This party is perfect for boys or girls ages 6 and up!

Invitations

Photograph your little slugger in front of a large posterboard or chalkboard with the party information. Glue photo prints to paper and decorate with stickers for a festive touch. For a fun addition, remind the kids to wear their favorite team cap or player’s jersey.

Activities

Make mini-baseball fields: As the guests arrive, have them make their own mini-edible fields using graham crackers, frosting, pretzel sticks, shaved coconut (dyed green), assorted cereals, toasted wheat germ (sand) and gummie bears. The children can carry their fields home in a decorated “stadium”, made from recycled cereal boxes.

Move on to the games which include:

Home–Run Derby: Play just like the pros, designate target and see how many times each “player” can score a homerun!
Sunflower seed spitting contest: Yes, it sounds gross … but most little boys thrive on this kind of stuff!
Go NUTS for Baseball: What’s a baseball game without peanuts? Hide roasted peanuts (in the shell) all over the house. Give each player a bag and let him or her search high and low for the peanuts. The person who collects the most peanuts (by weight — you don’t want to spend the next 10 days counting peanuts) wins.
*NOTE, be sure to check with all the children’s parents prior to the party to ensure there are no peanut allergies in the group. Hiding pennies would work equally as well.

Finally, it’s time for seventh inning stretch (lunch)!

Steamed Dogs and Third Base Sliders (wrapped in foil just like at the ball park), Home-plate No Fry Fries served in mini wax paper bags, Fruit Ball Kabobs (assorted melon balls and grapes on skewers), homemade Cracker Jacks served in recycled mini cereal boxes, covered with colored paper — be sure to insert a sticker or tattoo in each box for an added surprise!

Beverage: Lemonade mixed with food coloring to match your favorite team. In Chicago, we call it “Cubby-Ade”!

Dessert: “Batter-up” Birthday Cake

Favors

Personalized Baseball Cards: Although this favor idea requires a bit of preparation, it will pay off big-time when each child goes home with a special reminder of this wonderful day.

Cinder-Bear-ella

A fairytale birthday party for guests and their bears! Perfect for girls ages 5 and up. Knowing how much our daughters and nieces love their teddy bears, we were inspired to come up with this fun, fabulous and creative party.

Invitations

A simple paper scroll invites your guests to become fairy godmothers to their favorite stuffed teddy bears, as they all get ready for CinderBEARella’s ball!

Activities

As the guests arrive, the “Fairy Godmothers” can make their own wands using cardboard stars and shiny art supplies such as foil, glitter crayons, sequins, etc. Affix shiny star to a pencil and voila, a magic wand appears!

Once all the guests arrive, set up the CinderBEARella Salon with the following stations:

Blow dryer station: Include combs, brushes and Velcro rollers
Hair wrap station: Use old scrunchies, ribbon and barettes to create your bear’s perfect hairdo
Jewelry station: The girls can make matching bracelets and necklaces for their bears and themselves using beads and dental floss
Fashion station: Create fancy bear gowns and matching headbands (for the girls) using old fabric scraps, tacky glue and sequins

Once all the bears are “dressed” for the ball, invite the girls and their bears into the “Ballroom” for a rollicking game of musical chairs; freeze dance and / or the limbo (with the bears!)

Finally, the girls will sit down for a feast — bear sized of course!

Favors

The wands, necklaces, bracelets and anything else the girls made throughout the party

Be Bold, Be Beautiful, Be YOU!

A perfect party for ‘tweens that celebrates being who they are!

Invitation

This invitation needs a co-conspirator in the form of a mom or dad! Decorate a card with a piece of aluminum foil for the mirror. Be sure to include the following directive: YOU MUST COME AS YOU ARE! You must wear the exact same thing—hairstyle and all, that you are wearing right now!

Drive to each friend’s house to drop off the invitation and take a surprise picture.

Activities

As the guests arrive, have them decorate their own tote bags with a collage of images and words from magazines, old picture books and fabric remnants.

When all the guests arrive, assign groups to visit the various stations and make their own special bath and beauty products. The girls can store each product in their homemade tote. The salon stations are as follows:

Make your own Body Scrub (olive oil, brown sugar, organic vanilla)
Make your own Bath Bubble Tea (bath beads, bath poof, straw and cocktail rosette)
Make your own Lip Gloss (vegetable shortening, water and powered pink lemonade or fruit drink mix)
Make your own Moisturizing Masks (mashed carrot, avocado, heavy cream, honey and raw egg)

When the girls are done making their own products, they can sit down to a DIY lunch!

Favors

The bath and beauty products the girls made, as well as the photo of themselves “as they are.”