For those of you who didn’t catch my crazy viral posts about how we do birthday parties you can read it here. To summarize that post, I no longer act as party planning queen of my children’s birthday parties. I have passed that hat onto my kiddos and I can’t tell you how awesome this is for our whole family. So this January Kayla turned 8. We give each of our children $200 to spend on their parties – and they have to plan every last detail of it. One of the things we changed this year is we decided to give Kayla a small gift from us. She is a gift lover and was bummed last year when she didn’t get something special from us. So we were flexible enough to listen to her concerns and make adjustments. So we bought her this pillow craft kit, and this edible science kit. Just something small for her to open up. So what did the birthday princess decide to do for her birthday?? She decided to throw a fashion show birthday party.
She started out by choosing to send her invitations via Evite so she didn’t have to pay for paper invitations. On the invitation she made sure to tell her friends to bring a fancy dress for the fashion show.
Talk about a stark difference between a boy party and a girl party. Kayla insisted on decorations and favor bags while Isaac insists “they are a waste of money.” So we went to the Dollar Tree and she was able to find all the decorations for the party and favor bags for only $18. She decorated the table and Tim and I helped hang the banner.
Kayla also grabbed scraps of paper and made place tags so every one knew where to sit. HA!
She finished up the decorating details by purchasing a centerpiece and her own birthday party hat!
Next up was the food. She got 2 Little Caesar’s pizzas for $10 total and two liters of pop for a total of $12. Then she decided on a cake. She was dead set on a 6 layer cake with chocolate, strawberry and vanilla cake with white frosting. I told her it was going to be too tall and hard to cut. She didn’t care. Little lady knows what she wants. And yes it was too big and hard to cut, but she loved it. And I gave up the party planning hat to her so that is what we chose. She and I made it together and she said it was the best cake she had ever seen. All we used was box mix and canned frosting. She also bought individual ice cream cups. It cost $15 total.
Next she enlisted one of her baby-sitters to come do all the girls’ hair in fancy hairstyles. Her sweet babysitter Elizabeth said she would do it for free. (P.S. Elizabeth was definitely the VIP of the party, she rocked doing some pretty fabulous styles on the girls).
Next my husband did the nail painting station. We figured that was a good job for him since that was the least talented job needed in the beauty department. {Giggle}. What a great daddy!
I then was on make-up duty. So the girls flitted from station to station getting beautified. I also took everyone’s headshot.
After all the girl’s were beautified and (GASP!!!) looked like they were teenagers they did a fashion show. OMG it was hilarious. And perfect. And so 8 year old giggly girlish. That was the culmination of the party following by opening presents – Kayla’s favorite part.
8 year old DIVAS!
Meanwhile baby girl only spent $45 on the “perfect party”. So she got $155 in cash from us for the birthday budget. She gave 10% to God and is saving the rest. Right now she says she is saving up to pay for an airline ticket to go see her BFF in Portland this summer.
Another birthday party in the books for the Farrants. No stress on momma and complete freedom and fun for my kids. We love it!
and this month I am reviewing the Steam Machine Plus. I think everyone ought to own a steam machine for cleaning. Now which type you buy is up to you and the things you need cleaned the most. My absolute favorite thing I love about Home Right steam machines are that they are multi purpose.  
