Our art party on a creative budget

 

In our family, birthdays are a big deal. We don't have extravagant parties every year but with two kids two days a part it only makes sense to do a birthday party that will be fun for both girls and boys spanning several age ranges and make everyone happy. This year we offered the kids a choice, either a trip to Disney or a birthday party. I was certain they would pick Disney and I was wrong. So, the planning and brainstorming for party began. The weather in February can be a bit unpredictable where we live so the party needed to be indoors and be for both girls and boys. This is no small order with my two, but we finally settled on an art and candy party. My son loves art, mostly drawing and my daughter follows after my own heart and loves to craft. In order to make this theme work in our home we had to limit the number of guest to 12, including our two and make it work on a $100 budget.
For our decorations we used table cloths from the dollar tree, construction paper, spaghetti sauce jars for the skittles and paint sample cards to make the happy birthday banner.

When party guests arrived we had fruit loop necklaces for them to wear and eat while we waited for the others to arrive. They also picked out the color of their art smocks and filled their paint trays with their paint choices (trays and smocks were from Oriental Trading)

After most of the guests arrived the kids painted their first initial. Then some of the moms helped me change the table cloths and with fabric markers the kids drew on their own canvas bags. We used these bags to send home their projects.(The letters and bags were from Hobby Lobby, purchased on sale and with a coupon for $1 each).  I probably could have stopped there, but I wasn't thinking about how enticing the kids bedrooms and toys would be, so we went on...




For the third project the kids made paper airplanes and then flew them down the hall. For the final project the kids made skittle art, instead of sand art, with skittles I had sorted by hand and glass jars we found for .99c each at Hobby Lobby.

 

By this point the kids were crafted out so we made it cake and snack time. The candy was purchased at the Dollar Tree and the cake mix and fruity pebbles were purchased BOGO at BI-LO.

I had a game planned where the kids would be blindfolded and draw different parts of the body onto a poster board from the Dollar Tee, but I over planned - which was always a good thing when I taught school, and we didn't get to it, so we did it later that evening as a family.





Our party favors were watercolor paint trays with pop rocks attached. The paper read "Thanks for helping us craft, create and celebrate. You Rock!"

 

I think the party was a pretty big hit and we all got to spend some time getting creative and we have a sweet keepsake to help us remember the fun.