Having a Frugal Birthday Bash

Regan absolutely loves her birthdays. She tends to plan them months and sometimes years in advance. She has planned already that this November when she turns the big 13...we are supposed to go to Austin for a spa day and slumber party with all the female family members only. But in this post I want to tell about the wonderful frugal party of two years ago.

When Regan turned 10 one of the Harry Potter movies was going to be premiering. She wanted to take 10 girls to the movies, out to eat, to a hotel to spend the night and swim in the indoor pool. I managed the entire night....including her birthday gift (firefly cell phone) for $85. It was a mastery of frugality if I do say so myself.

I booked the Marriott through Priceline two rooms for one night...originally $95 dollars, but when I got there, the rooms were not handicapped accessible, or connected to each other. The hotel manager and I negotiated to two rooms across the hall from one another, and he moved the price down to $65 to keep my business at his hotel. I brought from Home, bottles of water ( I filled up myself) and a cake to be eaten later.

The tickets for the movies I had gotten for free, due to lots of surveys that at the time I could get Fandango bucks for....so the movie for 10 of us was....free. I took the girls to Sam's club to pick up snacks, and it turned out to be their holiday preview snack night (I had no idea...so an unexpected bonus). So I lined up the kids at table after table, until they were completely full. I bought a box of variety candy for the movie theater, and a huge container of cheese puffs for snacks at the hotel that night. Dinner....free.

The kids just used the water fountain at the movie theater, and each girl carried two candy bags in their purses to snack on. That night at the hotel, Regan was absolutely thrilled to get her firefly cell phone ( that was free to me through BuzzAgent) and the kids swam and snacked til midnight. The next morning we all ate at the Hotel's free breakfast bar, and then headed back home. It was a truly awesome birthday. My house was not destroyed, and I did not worry about goodie bags, because we had done so much. In fact none of the kids even asked about one. In each thank you note they received a picture of the group having fun that night.

Regan's party that year was such a success.. it was copied by at least two other families that we know of....but they did not get the deals that I did.