Nathan’s 5th Birthday Party

October 27th, 2018

Birthday parties…. do you dread them or do you love planning them? I do love them but I get anxious when a birthday is coming up. This was a big year in our house, Nathan was very excited to be turning 5! He loved watching the Hotel Transylvania movies so he chose Hotel Transylvania as the theme and he wanted the party to be at our house. I’ll take you through what worked for me and made the birthday party really fun and memorable!

Choose a theme! Once you have a theme you can start thinking about decorations and the invitation. I found the invitation on Etsy, downloaded a image and had it printed on cardstock. Get creative with decor! I was limited with Hotel Transylvania since they didn’t have any party décor at the local stores. So I just picked some fun colours and kept it going throughout the decorations. I was able to use my Halloween decorations in the house to make it a little spooky!
I used Monika Hibbs trick with buying lids to use as trays, it worked really well and was pretty cheap to buy them!
Decide where you want to have the party, the time and what type of food you want. In the past years I have gotten carried away with a menu because I had family over as well. Since this year we were just having his kindergarten friends over, we did pizza, veggies, popcorn and some juice! Dessert was cake and fruit. I picked 2:00 – 4:30 for the time! It went very well! Every birthday I get custom sugar cookies… she is incredibly talented!! I am always amazed with what she does. I just tell her the theme, how many I need and that’s it!
Entertainment! We decided to rent a bouncy castle and we also hired a magician. This did cost us a lot, so that wasn’t great (lol) but the kids did love both, it was a good mix. We rented a indoor playground last year for N’s birthday and I loved it! It was approximately $250 and included unlimited kids.
Loot bags – I didn’t take a picture of the loot bags! (blogger fail) I bought a Hotel Transylvania book (always check Amazon), some glowstick bracelets from the Dollar Store, a little Halloween craft from Michaels and a cookie. I bought bags from Michaels and cut out Hotel Transylvania pictures that I had printed at Staples, then taped one on each bag.
Think of what you can do to save some money. I was at my max with the bouncy castle, magician, cookies and cake… so I needed to think of a DIY project for the party. I decided to make a balloon garland! Here is what you need to make one:

Balloon decorating strip (something like this). The strip comes with little holes that you pull the balloon through once you blow it up, it is very easy!
A balloon pump. Trust me, just buy one! Here is one that is similar to mine.
Depending on how many colours you want in the garland, you will need approx. 6 bag of balloons. I like to get three colours using two sizes, 11″ and 9″ or 5″.

Keep blowing up the balloons, tying them and pulling them through the strip. Alternate sizes and colours as you go along… then you will end up with something like this!
I left 1-2 feet on the ends (no balloons) to tape it on the wall. The great thing about this is that it lasts for weeks and it’s an easy DIY!