In Defense of the Simple Family Birthday Party

Birthday Decor compliments of the Party Bin and the Kid Decorating Team

Have you noticed how elaborate a lot of birthday parties are getting?  Just take a trip through bloggerville, and you'll see what I mean.  (I recently saw one that involved building separate floor to ceiling make-up/dress-up stations for each child invited.  Princess Parties are getting expensive...)  Now, I have thrown my fair share of fancy parties, so if that floats your boat, great.  Sometimes it floats mine.  But sometimes I think these parties are inspired by something a little more harmful.  Like maybe "one-upmanship".  Neighbor Jr. had a clown for his birthday party, so we have to have a pony.  We had a pony for our kiddo, so the neighbors on our other side have to one-up us.  They have a ferris wheel.  For their 1 year old.

People end up going into debt.  There are small scale family wars.  There's a ton of stress.  All for a birthday party that the little wee one isn't even going to remember.  And he might even be stressed out by all the activity, changed up schedule and family tension.

And then little jr. grows up.  Now he will help with the one-upmanship (remember, we taught it to him).  Last year he had a clown, this year he wants a trip to sea world.  And boy can he ever pout if you don't give it to him.  Sigh...

Those eyes are full of wonder over -- get this -- Balloons!  No pony necessary.

I take a tip from the folks with 6 or more kids.  You might get by with all that mayhem when you only have one or two kids, but when you have six or eight you're doing this nearly every month.  Most people with 6 or more kids have learned to keep things simple.  And you know what?  Their kids are okay anyway.  Most of the time, their kids are down right normal -- and selfless, too.  Who knew?

We keep things pretty simple at our house.  We have a party bin.  We keep it stocked with balloons, streamers, party plates & napkins, banners, etc.  We even -- are you ready -- re-use a lot of the things in our bin.  We generally don't have elaborate party themes.

Our most recent family party featured our favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe turned into a huge "cookie cake".  I also made my special homemade ice cream.  Everybody thought it was delicious and it's even semi-healthy.  All you cake decorators out there - be nice and don't make fun of my cookie cake.  I missed the cake decorating class.

When one child has a birthday, the other kids grab the party bin and decorate for the birthday child.  We decorate a "birthday chair" for the special child to sit in.  The table area gets a new party look.  I let the birthday child choose what dinner and dessert they want.  For the older kids, we have a set amount of money they receive and we take them shopping.  They love getting to pick out their own presents for their birthday.  The younger ones still like the element of surprise, so we buy and wrap presents for them.  We usually don't invite anyone over for this.  It's just a simple family party.  We sometimes have a sleep-over or something, but it is on a different day.  That way our friends don't feel obligated to buy anything.  It's fast.  It's simple.  It's low stress.  It honors the child more than the party.

And do you know what?  Our kids love their simple birthdays.  They look forward to them.  Rocket Boy starts planning his almost a year ahead.  Amazing.

Here's to a simple life!

Angela