How to Plan A Birthday Party Stress Free + The Exact Timeline I Use [FREE GUIDE]

 

I wanted to share some tips that I learned on how to plan a birthday party with you in hopes that you can learn from what I did to help you plan an even better birthday party for your little ones!

 

 

 

 

My daughter Jadyn’s 5th birthday was a couple of weeks ago and I still don’t think we’ve fully recovered! It’s been such a whirlwind of planning and getting ready and finally cleaning after the party!

 

 

 Click here to download the video transcript

 

Let’s start from the beginning shall we?

Jadyn wanted a Hello Kitty themed party this year. I have to say I LOVE making homemade invitations for my girls. I’ve made all the invitations for their birthday parties to baby showers, I even made our wedding invitations!

For me, the planning timeline starts January 2nd. Her party is usually in the middle of February so that gives us time to come up with a theme and get crackalackin on her invitations! Since her theme was Hello Kitty this year, the colors of the party were going to be mainly a light pink.

To get inspiration for the invitations, we head on over to our favorite inspiration site, Pinterest! We searched for invitation examples and Jadyn found one that she liked. So step 1 is complete. We have the invitation.

Being that she is in preschool now, I asked if she wanted to invite some of her friends from school to her party. Her parties used to be basically family and super close friends. But not this year! Oh no! She said it wasn’t fair to only invite some kids, we needed to invite all the kids in her class!

Her heart is so big! Definitely a proud mama moment there. But….that totalled to 40 invitations! That we needed to make! BY HAND! Insert Home Alone scream face here!

Time to get to work! Luckily we have a trusted friend the Silhouette to help us in this endeavor.

At this point, you should have the location and the time of the party figured out so it can be put into the invitation.

It took about a week to get everything done, but here is what they ended up looking like! I’m so proud!

 

this is the front of the card

 

 

this is the inside of the card

 

I always try to make sure that these are sent out with at least 2 to 3 weeks between the party date and the invitation arrival date. Sometimes I don’t hit my mark but I want to be able to have enough time for people to respond and be able to have that time available.

The next step is to come up with your food

This depends on the time of your party. I like to have my parties mid afternoon at 3:00. This is after nap time for the little ones. It is after lunch and before dinner. So everyone is up for snacking, not an entire meal. I try to have some forms of healthy snacks because we have so many dessert options. This year we had a fruit bowl, veggies and ranch, crackers and cheese, chips and salsa.

What kind of desserts will you be offering?

Our parties always have cupcakes and cake. I love making cupcakes (and eating them)! And kids love their cake. I attempted making cakes in prior years but that was too stressful and too much to do for me. I buy a round cake from the store with plain frosting and add embellishments at home.

This year I tried something new and made frosted sugar cookies! Oh my gosh they were a lot of work but they turned out so amazing! They added that extra touch to the hello kitty party!

 

 

Two weeks to four weeks before the party

 I will look online and see if they have any decorations that are relatively inexpensive. Or at least cheaper than the physical stores. This way they have enough time to be delivered before the party.

The week of the party

 is when I will start stocking up on the food and any ingredients I need to make the cupcakes, and cookies this time around. I will also get any extra decorations, goody bags for the kids, balloons, a helium tank, and any extras.

Day before the party

All of the prep work happens the day before the party. I will cut all the fruit and vegetables and put them into their own containers. I will make the cupcakes but I save the frosting for the morning of the party. The cookies needed to be made and decorated as well.

I will also take out all the decorations and all the party items and set them on the dining table so I can easily set up in the morning. We did have a few parties where I needed to set up some decor items the night before. It depends on the extent of the decorations.

The day of the party

 

 

I will make the frosting for the cupcakes and get those decorated and ready to go. I pull out all the plates and trays, utensils, and get them set out on the table.

Justin and Jadyn are in charge of the balloons.

Quick tip here: if you like having balloons at your parties, go with a helium tank. The large size is about $40 but you can blow them up yourself and not have to worry about transporting balloons in the car. That is a challenge!

A half an hour before the party starts is when I will pull all the food out and set those out on the table. That way everything is set up before the early birds arrive!

The party usually lasts about an hour to 2 hours. While everyone arrives, the kids are playing and running around having a good time. Everybody is able to mingle and have some snacks. Then we do presents, sing happy birthday, and eat cake and cupcakes! The kids play some more until everyone goes home!

This year the aftermath of the entire party looked like a bomb went off! There was wrapping paper everywhere. Toys everywhere. Did I mention we had this party at our house? Lol

We had some close friends and family stay after the party and we had dinner, talked and had a great time. At this point I didn’t worry about the mess. I enjoyed the time and the company.

It took a couple days to get back on track. But it was all worth it!

 

How to Plan A Birthday Party Stress Free

Tip #1 : If you are going to have a bunch of kids, clean up and entertainment will be a lot easier if you have the party at a place that can handle it. I like hosting parties at our house, but I think it would have been easier if the kids had a place to run around without having to worry about anything.

Tip#2: DIY what you can. It doesn’t have to be Pinterest worthy to be awesome. I don’t know what compelled me to make birthday cakes. I saw some videos on youtube and thought I could do that. Looks easy enough right?! Wrong! Making the batter from scratch and the special buttercream frosting…I have to admit it is SO delicious. But is it worth all the pain? I don’t think so.

Ask yourself if you are taking on too much? You want to be able to enjoy the party and not get caught up in stress. I’ve had to learn that it’s ok to hire out, ask for help, and scale back.

Tip#3: If you can, hire a photographer, especially for the first birthday. I asked our photographer that has taken pretty much all of our professional photos to take Jadyn’s first birthday pictures. And boy was it a relief. There is so much to worry about that it was an amazing feeling to know that no matter what I would have the pictures and the memories of that special day.

How do you plan your kids’ birthday parties? Do you follow a system or a timeline? I would love to know!