Outrageous Kid Parties On a Budget - Conclusion

Well, Maddie turned 1 and the party was wonderful!  I don't know how but I forgot to get a picture of the whole shabang :(  Lesson learned.  Instead I just have some pictures of specific things.  I wanted to do a wrap up of the rest of the stuff I did for the party and the total cost, so here goes!

The Cake!

First off, I made the cake...it's kind of my thing if you didn't know.  And since I make cakes here and there (and just did a wedding cake last weekend) I have a lot of the stuff needed and didn't have much out of pocket cost here.  Total I spent on random ingredients needed for this cake: $3.94

Suggestions for Cake on a budget -  This is an area you will need to decide whether you want to save money here by doing it yourself or splurge and spend some of your budget to get a fancy cake.

1.  Make it yourself.  You can make it as fancy as you want or keep it simple.  Wilton (can be purchased at hobbly lobby or walmart) makes a ton of products to help make decorating easy.  But be careful, they can add up quick and your "cheap" cake can turn into an unexpected expense.  I will also warn you that decorating fancy cakes isn't quite as easy as they make it look on TV.  I am almost entirely self taught (took 2 classes at hobby lobby) and it has taken time to get where I am.  I have had several people that said "we will make it ourselves, it can't be that hard" and then end up frustrated because it was more time consuming than they thought and didn't turn out how they wanted.  This leads us to option 2:
2.  Use some of your budget to purchase a cake (shameless self plug - purchase from Me! I have competetive pricing (cheaper than wal-mart and food pyramid!) and work to give you an awesome cake at an affordable price!). 

The Party Favors
~What went in those adorable bags :)

  In the bags there was Chex Mix, Caramel Corn, Salted Brown Butter Rice Krispies (Best Recipe EVER!) and sugar cookies.  I had a lot of the ingredients laying around that needed to be used but total spent was $17.17 + tax.  Now this was a little more than I would have liked to have spent but I wanted good party favor bags.  Also, a bulk of the cost was for the chex mix so to cut cost I could have skipped this.  Without the chex mix my out of pocket cost would have been around $2 (I had to purchase more popcorn and corn syrup but that's all!)

Other stuff for the Party:
Plates, Cups, Napkins: $3.42 (I already had forks)
Punch: $4ish (sorry, lost my receipt!)

So, now for the party grand total:
$57.00
Not too shabby for an Outrageous kids party :)  Plus, I have learned some things and hope to do it for even cheaper in the future :)  Hope you have gained some great ideas on how to save money for birthday parties and still make them look expensive!