{"id":81,"date":"2016-04-11T11:51:25","date_gmt":"2016-04-11T11:51:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kiddyzone.co.uk\/news\/?p=81"},"modified":"2016-04-02T11:54:17","modified_gmt":"2016-04-02T11:54:17","slug":"parties-on-a-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kiddyzone.co.uk\/news\/2016\/04\/parties-on-a-budget\/","title":{"rendered":"Parties on a budget"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;\">Kids parties can be hugely expensive. With growing pressures to keep up with the Jone\u2019s, kid\u2019s parties can be a big stress if you\u2019re on a budget.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;\">The good news is that you don\u2019t have to spend a fortune to give the kids a good time. In fact, we\u2019d even say the kids will quite possibly have more fun if you don\u2019t!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;\">When it comes to parties, kids love simplicity! They don\u2019t need loads of different things to have a good time. It\u2019s amusing to see, that often the more lavish a party is, the less the children enjoy it. Quite simply because there are too many activities competing for the kids\u2019 attention: a bouncy castle in one corner, entertainer in the other, then a face painter, a mascot thrown in for good measure and why not a popcorn machine? Sounds amazing but it\u2019s too much!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;\">Kids will become frantic and not be able to concentrate on very much for very long and it\u2019s usually a big stress and panic to squeeze it all in to the 2 hrs.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;\">But having less does not mean doing away with the fun. Far from it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;\">The first thing is to decide what you want to do for your kid\u2019s party. Give your child a few options and ask what they think they might like.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.kiddyzone.co.uk\/category\/themes\/2\">Themed children&#8217;s parties<\/a> have loads of mileage and give you a lot of room for creativity at very low cost.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;\">Costumes- You can have a lot of fun making your kids costume and it will cost you nothing. e.g. a pirate costume -get out the scissors and snip away at an old white shirt and tatty old pair of school shirts\/ trousers, and a nice red scarf around the head.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;\">Or what about fairy wings cut out from card board and covered in pink wrapping paper and sprinkled with a bit of glue and glitter. These give just a few ideas of how to make costumes from very little.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;\">Party Invites \u2013 if you are computer savvy and have a bit of creative flair you could do your own cool invites on the computer, of just do an Internet search for party invites and download free templates available.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;\">Make your own Cake \u2013 the sky is the limit when it comes to cake ideas.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;\">Decorations \u2013 balloons are very cheap and usually all you need to create a super party atmosphere. Just have lots of them!!! You could also make your own colourful paper chains, or get some reasonably priced party decorations from any online party store.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;\">Entertainment \u2013 every party needs some sort of entertainment. You could of course do the entertainment yourself but you\u2019d need to be confident you could lead a group of kids through sufficiently fun activities for 2 hours. If you can\u2019t then this is something you might want to budget for. if you are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kiddyzone.co.uk\/category\/entertainers\/123\">hiring a Children\u2019s entertainer<\/a> then this is likely to be where most of the cost of your party will go, but you needn\u2019t spend a fortune \u2013 if you went for a week day after school, then entertainers are far more likely to give better deals as weekdays are not as busy as weekends. or a morning slot like\u00a0<span class=\"aBn\" tabindex=\"0\" data-term=\"goog_78710260\"><span class=\"aQJ\">11 am \u2013 1 pm<\/span><\/span>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;\">Food \u2013 parents can work tirelessly in the kitchen to create the most amazing party food but you\u2019ll be surprised how little kids can eat at parties so do remember this before buying loads or going to loads of trouble. If you want to keep it cheap and simple, sandwiches and crisps and a few finger foods like sweets and small fruit like strawberries, grapes etc. is perfect. Finger food is always best. But if the creative guru in you can\u2019t resist to try and dazzle and amaze, then you can be super creative and theme your food in so many different ways whilst still sticking to your budget.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;\">Party bags often go in the bin or get left lying around the minute kids get home if they\u2019re just cheap toys, so you might want to settle for a piece of cake and a small but decent quality toy. Or maybe give kids a small pocket sized children\u2019s story book. This has become increasingly popular and kids are far more likely to keep them. You can pick them up in shops for about 50p \u2013 \u00a31 each.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kids parties can be hugely expensive. With growing pressures to keep up with the Jone\u2019s, kid\u2019s parties can be a big stress if you\u2019re on a budget.\u00a0 The good news is that you don\u2019t have to spend a fortune to give the kids a good time. In fact, we\u2019d even say the kids will quite &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kiddyzone.co.uk\/news\/2016\/04\/parties-on-a-budget\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Parties on a budget&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78,55,34,100],"tags":[94,53,62,52],"class_list":["post-81","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ideas","category-kids","category-party-bags-invitations","category-plan","tag-best","tag-entertainment","tag-fun","tag-parties"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiddyzone.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiddyzone.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiddyzone.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiddyzone.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiddyzone.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiddyzone.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiddyzone.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions\/82"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiddyzone.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiddyzone.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiddyzone.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}