Do you have "normal" birthday parties?

[GailGoldie]

i'm a theme freak- but have also done "normal" parties with nothing special - like the twin's 3rd last june - life was too crazy to do much....

some parties we go to are really cool/themed, etc - but most are just normal, and this area = wealthy, so I think it's more of just a creative thing, not a $$ thing.

[h]

I have always tried to do reasonably cute parties with a theme and a couple creative touches, but nothing over the top.

DS1's b-day party was last weekend. It was a bounce house place with a Lego Star Wars theme (both his choice). I ordered a banner and some centerpiece sticks off Etsy, made a cupcake stand out of Lego/Duplos we already owned, and ordered candy Legos off of Amazon (so cute--you can build with them then eat them!) to have at each kid's place. We bought Star Wars plates and napkins and helium balloons from a party store, and only served homemade cupcakes, Goldfish, and strawberries. Aside from the cost of the bounce house place, we probably spent $125 on food and drinks, decorations, and goodie bag stuff, which seems pretty "normal" to me.

[Deleted]

I am not good with this stuff, so DS will always have "normal" parties.

[6fsn]

We do a theme, but only spend ~$30 on decorations. This year is a baseball party- I bought a baseball pinata, some baseball picks for the cupcakes, a few baseball cut outs for a banner, red buckets and balls for centerpieces, and some plastic ballcaps for the peanuts in a shell.

[mellymel]

I went a little over-the-top for DS's 1st birthday party. We did a woodland forest theme with custom invites from Etsy, photo banners & birthday banners in coordinating colors from Etsy, custom tissue poufs from Etsy, custom shirt from Etsy from DS,...

One of the biggest splurges was his cake @ $200, but it was a huge hit and delicious and everyone loved it! We had it designed to coordinate with the invites:

[satama]

We do normal kid parties. I pick a theme and usually get stuff from oriental trading and party city. I don't have the interest in crafting myself silly to make sure we have matching toothpick banners and gable boxes for the favors. I made the cake for his first birthday and was pregnant and exhausted for his second so he actually got a *gasp* grocery store bakery cake because I was exhausted and we couldn't find another place to do a Mickey cake like he wanted.

We ordered pizza and had salad and some veggie and cheese platters. Cheap and easy. We did a Mickey ball pit for the "entertainment", and had a bunch of Mickey trinkets for the goodie bags. All the kids had a blast.