After the beginning of the new year starts the birthday and holiday season in our family. February, March, and April all have birthdays, our anniversary, Valentine's Day, and Easter. I love celebrating special days and holidays so I just love these months when there is so much to celebrate! I enjoy making people feel loved and making special little treats and surprises. Growing up for both my husband and I, birthdays and holidays just weren't things our families really celebrated. We wanted to do that differently with our family, but it has been a journey of discovering how much is the right amount for our family.
This has changed slightly from year to year depending on our income, age of our children, and where we lived. We have landed on a method that is working really well for us and I thought it would be fun to share it! The children pick their birthday dinner and a box of cereal for breakfast. We rarely purchase cereal and when we do it's not the kind that the children usually drool over in the cereal aisle so this is a real treat! Then they get to pick out their ice cream, cake mix and icing, candles, and decorations for their cake. The birthday child and I make up the cake together and they absolutely love being able to make their cake. I am no cake decorator but they always seem happy with how it turns out so that's all that really matters. We buy decorations to decorate the house and we buy one gift. Then we pick an experience or activity to do on their birthday. The budget we have found that works really well in recent years is $150. I love that this has always been able to be adjusted based on how much we can afford and can be applicable in any situation. If we need to do way less, we simply adjust for it and do a cheaper activity and buy a less expensive gift.
Note: We have never thrown our kids birthday parties and neither of our families are big on giving gifts so whatever we do for our children is usually the extent of what they get for their birthday. When we lived close to family for a few years, we would have extended family over for cake and ice cream and games but no gifts. Our children loved it and we still did what I mentioned above only with a drastically reduced amount of money.
I think a lot of what you do depends on what is important to your children and what makes them feel loved. For my kids, they LOVE decorations for their birthdays. So while it can seem like a waste of money, I make it a priority to decorate for their birthdays and honestly, I think it's the best money spent. It just means so much to them and that makes me happy. For my daughter's birthday last month we waited until she was asleep and then snuck into her room and hung decorations from her ceiling and then closed her door and used crepe streamer to keep balloons against her door so that in the morning she would have a whole cascade of balloons fall on her when she opened her door.
We purchased a lego set she had been wanting for $48, she wanted homemade cinnamon rolls for breakfast instead of cereal, and we had everything on hand that she wanted to eat for her dinner. The activity we surprised her with was going to an indoor water park which was $27 for the whole family. Her cake cost $12.50 for the cake mix, icing, candles, and cake topper. I bought a package of party decor online from Walmart for $13. It came with signs, streamers, and balloons. Since her meal hadn't cost any extra, we gifted her $30 out of the birthday budget to purchase some treats for herself or save, whichever she wanted. She ended up purchasing a piece of jewelry and saving the rest. She also wanted to go to a coffee shop and get steamers. That was $18.50. The gift bag and tissue paper were $1.96. The total for her birthday was $150.96. She had a blast and so did the whole family.
Our youngest just had his 4th birthday and I had a blast planning and preparing his special day. The night before his birthday we snuck into his room and filled his floor with balloons and then hung these happy birthday signs and monster trucks from his doorway for him to see when he got up. We ordered his decorations from Amazon for $17.99. He wanted corn dogs for his birthday and then I made up a salad, cut up a cantaloup and apple sauce we already had on hand to round out the meal. He picked fruit loop cereal for breakfast and a red velvet cake with chocolate icing and strawberry ice cream. His food items, cake, candles, plates, napkins, etc cost $28.83. We got him a remote controlled rock crawler truck for his present ($44) and for his activity we went to a trampoline park to jump for an hour ($55.) The total for his birthday was $145.82.
I think it's important to remember that it really is the simplest things that mean the most to our children. I think we underestimate how little it takes to make our children happy. It is usually us, the parents, that feel the need to do more and better and bigger. Maybe it is us who need to examine our hearts and find the seeds of discontent in ourselves rather than always assuming that they might not be satisfied with what they receive or fear that they will be disappointed. Our children always amaze me with their simplicity and thrill over small things. They want to feel special and loved and celebrated and that can be done regardless of how much or little we spend.
When we lived in West Virginia and money was extremely tight, we got all the decorations at the Dollar Tree and $5 was the budget we had for decor, plates, napkins, etc. Birthday gifts were around $10. Experiences were usually free, like fishing, or very inexpensive. Usually they chose to simply have family come over for cake and ice cream for their treat. We found so many ways to make their days special and I don't think they enjoy their birthdays any more now with more money spent than they did then with very little money spent.
I would love to know how birthdays look in your house and what things you do to make your kids feel special! Do you have certain traditions or a set budget you stick to? I'd love to hear about it in the comments or in the forum. As always, thank you for sharing in this journey with us and giving me a space to share things that are dear to my heart.
Blessings, Grace