Nifty or Thrifty. What kind of a mommy are you?

Nifty:

—adjective, nif·ti·er, nif·ti·est.

attractively stylish or smart: a nifty newdress for Easter.
very good; fine; excellent: a nifty idea.substantial; sizable: We sold the car for a nifty profit.

Thrifty:

—adjective, thrift·i·er, thrift·i·est.

practicing thrift or economical management; frugal: a thrifty shopper.
thriving, prosperous, or successful.
thriving physically; growing vigorously.

☆☆☆ ●●● Party Time! ●●● ☆☆☆

As a person, I have lost my creativity a looong time ago. When I finished school, I really did not get to use whatever artistic talents I’ve got left.

Even my handwriting became bad over the years. I did not have the best handwriting way back schooldays, but it was not bad either. But since I started working it was mostly dealing with computers. Rarely do we write. Only when writing some reminders on post-its, and that’s about it.

Back to the topic…

I decided to share my experiences as a mom to connect to other moms out there and exchange ideas. Besides, that’s one reason why we are here right?

If you have been following me, you may already know that I have 3 kids – 8, 3 and 1.5 years old. You can find my introduction blog here.

Raising kids is not easy. Neither is it cheap. Milk, diapers, clothes, child care, school… name it!

As parents however, we love to celebrate milestones of our children.

first smile

first tooth

first steps

… and a lot of other firsts. Even first day in school!

If we celebrate these many firsts, it is just that we would like to give our children a great first birthday party!

My eldest had his first birthday a long time ago, obviously. But my 2 younger ones were born only 18 months apart. So with expenses growing, I had to improvise. I want to celebrate their birthdays without breaking the bank so I scoured a lot of DIY posts online.

Candy-themed Birthday Party. Rheign Gabrielle’s 1st Birthday. (19 June 2015)

I chose the theme because it was colorful. I was 4 months pregnant with my 3rd baby that time and had all the reasons to be lazy.

My very talented sister, @erangvee, was the one who designed her backdrop tarpouline.

My friend, Ayah, made my baby girl’s tutu dress and did most of the job – giveaways, coordination, photobooth, venue design, everything! … I don’t know what I could have done without her!

Tutu dress…

Cake and giveaways…

Ninja Go-themed Birthday Party. Roulan Geric’s 7th Birthday. (15 April 2016)

Less than a year after that candy-themed party, we celebrated my eldest son’s 7th birthday! This is another milestone for a child, celebrated grandiosely especially in the Philippines, for many believe that a child surpassing 7 years is becoming more independent. At this age, he leaves kindergarten, enters the “big school” and mingle with “big kids”. Plus a lot of other reasons of course...

Ok. We cannot afford “grandiose” because we have lots of other better things to spend money on. Like we have a new addition to the family, for instance, whose 1st birthday we will have to celebrate 7 months later.

Whaaattt??!!!

Birthdays,

after birthdays,

after birthdays….

Thanks God for birthdays!

So this time, despite having a 5-month old baby, I did not allow myself to have an excuse. I did most of the preparations for this.

Again, thanks to Pinterest, I found lots of free printables to create the wonderful Ninja Go Theme.

We chose Ninja Go because my son loves it at the same time the colors are just so bright and festive.

Ninja Go Inspired Lollipops

Ninja head balloons, loot bags and candies

I bought 4 colors of crepe paper – black, yellow, green and red, and wrapped each lollipop. I have printed the Ninja eyes on sticker paper. There were different sizes for the balloons, loot bags and the lollipops. Oh, that thing where I stuck the lollipops? That’s a melon, just wrapped with green crepe paper!

All’s well that ends well. Mommy pulled off the Ninja Go themed party. Thanks to her friends who were not too busy at the office, they were able to cut off the “Happy Birthday” banner!

♥گ♥گ♥گ♥♥گ♥گ♥گ♥ Last, but not the least… ♥گ♥گ♥گ♥♥گ♥گ♥گ♥

This is my least costing birthday party. Given the timing, we had it outdoors so we did not pay for the venue. I myself cooked almost all the food, therefore saved a lot.

I loved how the colors are so simple but lively. Again, only 4 dominant colors:

I myself designed the giveaways. I just bought some plastic jars from the supermarket and filled them with colorful candies. Just glued the ribbons, stick characters on the lid, and lined the inside of the jars with Sesame-themed printables again from Pinterest.

Even the cupcakes were homemade. I had very bad frosting talents (I still do!) but some rainbow candy sprinkles did the trick.

Again, cake toppers and that cupcake towers were DIYs. The cupcake tower was actually made for the engagement (or wedding party, I forgot already) of one of my officemates. Consider my son’s birthday party as a dry run for a much bigger event!

No matter how much you spend on something, I think it is just right that we make the best out of it. With the help of friends, who we consider as family in this country, thrifty mommy (and daddy @kennyroy) was able to pull off 3 great birthday parties for her three incredible kids!

And I give myself double-thumbs up for that!