#225 – Budget-Friendly Bash: A Parent’s Guide to Planning Kid’s Parties with Ease with Elizabeth Cates

Hi, I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

I am too and I, you know, one kind of interesting idea. And I'm so glad we're connected today is actually right now is the time of this recording is on my mind, because my son's fifth birthday is coming up. And so I'm kinda like I haven't done much yet. It's about a month away. But it's like the whole, you know, thinking about Alright, the planning has to start, but I know that at least for me for the last five years, it's felt like a big undertaking to think about this stuff. And you know, and I've done some great, great parties, at least at least I think so. Maybe I was going over the top with them. And it's definitely overwhelming, like selecting the venue and the cake and the the themes and all of that. And I also was just looking because I'm I like to statistics, it does help to connect the dots, but like what do other people spend on you know, kids birthday parties, and there's an average, but a few like, you know, it's the numbers are, you know, maybe here in US are different than in UK, but like something along the lines like like at least $500 for a birthday party. So I'm excited to connect, because I'd love to hear your feedback and thoughts. And you know, how can parents do this differently? Maybe cheaper, or maybe, you know, maybe we can find another word maybe more purposely. But there's got to be a better way to do this. So let's just dive in.

Absolutely. I'm really excited to hear about you're planning an upcoming birthday. I mean, I've recently just had my daughter's first birthday. And like you said, I think this is one of the things that sparks the interest in the idea of creating budget bashes because I went over budget. But I worked in the party sector for a really long time. So I committed knew the right people to ask to help me. And I knew the right questions to ask to get the look that I wanted, and what things that I was going to spend my money on versus what I was going to save my money on. And I created a comprehensive guide and how I really done that, and showed basically how I did it for 500 and how I did it for less than that on different parties and different birthdays. Obviously my background is in event planning and event coordinating social media, I started off as a social media presence, and then I monetize my income while being a stay at home mom. And then I ended up creating a unique concept called petite Bereans. And it's actually a playgroup company where parents can pay to come to these like lavish parties. One of the biggest things I had a problem with really was comparing myself all the time to these people and thinking to myself, Oh, I don't have this, I can't do that. So we don't have the budget to be doing like extravagant and Kim Kardashian style birthday parties, but I really like the look of it. And the idea is that you can create these memories with this like theme that you associate your child with. And that concept is sparked the idea of creating those themes, but allowing people to come in enjoy kind of all that hard work without having to spend spend the money doing it yourself because obviously it would be a ticketed event. And, yeah, it's developed into just this passion that I had from DIY, being Budget Savvy. And my husband is very like particular he's a he's a finance guy. So I always had an interest of where I could save a penny or two. If it was up to me, you know? And one of the biggest ways I've learned has been just being creative. using Pinterest using technology is one of the biggest things I do to help that creativity and that flow. Inside of budget bash, you can kind of find a budget planning flowchart, so something that will help you go from start to finish. And I think this is going to be really helpful for parents.

I love that. And I can't wait to get my hands on it. I mean, I've, I guess maybe it just depends on how creative you are as a person, right? Or as a mom. And so you and you, of course, work with what your budget allows for these kinds of things. But we all know, right? Where the world is now and how cost of everything has increased? It's also like, You got to be creative. And then I guess it depends, right? Maybe you have more experience with this. Like, if you planning for a birthday party, if you have a boy versus a girl, right? At least you know, maybe there's some savings ideas. But like, if we have to start at the top, you mentioned there's a flowchart of how you make like decisions. But how do you like, what would be helpful for someone to kind of like map out at the at first, like, do you look at finances to start with? Or do you like really come up with some ideas first, and then kind of work around that.

Yeah, I agree. I also, you know, I wish I would have, I would have understood this earlier, because I did a big party for my son's first birthday. It's just felt like, you know, after being a new mom, you're like, oh, my gosh, I've made it to the first year and it's like, amazing to celebrate something so and then it was great. I mean, I have I still look at all those pictures, and there's memories created forever. But then when the second birthday came, I was like, You know what, I don't have to like I because his birthday is in January, my son's Liam he's turning five. So it's like, and we didn't like you said we didn't have a whole lot of space inside. And I just wanted to invite everybody and anybody. Because it you know, it was a big deal at a time. So I rented the tents and we had, you know, heaters inside. So it's like, it's almost like a wedding. Like, you know, second birthday came around. I was like, I don't need to do any of that. Because it took me months to plan and order and decorate. And so yeah, I think I think I agree. It's like, depending on when your child's birthday is and what season it is, and depends on where you live, right? Like even like I'm in Northern California, and it's not as cold here in the winters. But it's still not like you know, as pleasant and it could be rainy day, if we're birthday party in January to hold you to hold in the park or outside. So like location definitely makes the difference of what you know what you can actually afford. Now personally, I also learned something as my son started going to preschool that you could just bring cupcakes a little cake to, you know, to school and like that's our, you know, fun little events on its own, and those kids don't have to come to your house.

Yeah, I agree. I think budgets can be such a personal thing when it comes to parties because parties and celebrations are considered a luxury item, isn't it really it's not a necessity that we need. It's something we do for children or for families. It's something that is depending on the person who you are and what your financial situation is what you can decide. And that's why I've decided to just not include, you know, the idea of like you should spend this amount and you shouldn't spend this amount. It's more about being savvy with what you're already spending. So say for example, you do have a 500 budget you want you want to do this space if you want to have a big outdoor one year old birthday party, you can do that you shouldn't feel like bad about it. Yeah, it's it's kind of something that you don't need but at the end of the day, if you like make your own centerpieces, you did something that you could keep forever, basically. So if you like go to a charity shop and you're creating something like they have a teddy bear theme or something, for example, and you create a little teddy bear on a balloon floating away. This is one of the projects they talk about and budget bash, or are you kidding, like faux flowers, you're clapping teapots from charity shops in Ukrainian like faux teapots, flower centerpieces, these are something that you can create it and keep as momentos in the future for like your child to have and keep. So those teddy bears from his first birthday from his friend's birthday party can keep that are full of flowers. And a piece made out of a teacup can be kept for like your daughter's wedding. And some that is the sort of concept behind budget bash. And what I've talked about is keeping costs low. These are the hacks that keep the costs low. But you splurging on something else, it's okay to or just not spending any money at all, and just having like your close family around and still like creating their own first birthday cake. That is the memory that a child remember forever, what remember how much you spend, it's good to remember what it was like, looking back at the pictures, and what effort and what sort of creativity you used as a parent to like, showcase your love for your child, because that's what you do, isn't it for a birthday party, you kind of showcase your love for your child, you just go all out for them on their birthday. Yes,

I think one of the coolest things I've seen, someone actually had a binder and they would stick a 20 pound 20 $20 or 20 pound note in the binder each birthday. And then on the 18th birthday, you know, they get all this money or that sort of thing or like $100 bill. And while there you can buy like a little more, a less expensive toy. So like you said, like 20 $30 toy, and then keep this binder they you know, they're stashing away or 20 or 100, or how much they can afford. And then on their big birthday, they give them a binder and say this is for you to use to like move into your new apartment, or this is for you to use to get your new car or you know, whatever sort of thing. So those are, there's there's a combination of what you could do financially. However, you could also look at it as as like an experience why so instead of like the toys that they only use for like a year or like six months and that you're out of it, and you don't know what to do with it. You could also use the rule of maybe perhaps spending it on an experience that child could use throughout the year. So a museum pass something maybe education like a pass on kindle a gift card for them for them to use that sort of thing and even younger Kids, they could get a lot of use out of like a Kindle gift card or something to go towards their their future. But in terms of, you know how you said, grandparents being able to provide something longer lasting, like I would definitely circle back around to perhaps that binder concept of saving money for them kind of on the side and then surprising them on their important birthday, orange or instead, instead of spending so much money in a birthday party, use our got used the budget bash guide to then do smaller birthday parties, maybe more intimate birthday parties on the news, do it yourself decorations and fun little crafts. And then instead of spending that money on a birthday party, stash that away in the binder, and then give it to them on a on a big birthday to celebrate something larger.

Yeah, so I like that. So can we can we talk a little bit about your gut or your the guide or the the chart that you mentioned? So I think the force was like, Okay, what's the creative theme? And if we do have a budget, or if we just kind of want to have a number in mind, what do we what do we do next to like how, let's say if we're kind of more focused on maybe doing some of the stuff, you know, on our own, as opposed to like, going out and buying everything. So like, if you're more creative person?

I like that. And we certainly will. We'll link in the show notes, once your book is out. So how, like in terms of food, like, because that's probably like, once you determine your theme, you sort of know what you're doing, have some ideas about the decorations? Like that would be like the next big category? Right? Like, what are you doing? And I think you mentioned this at the beginning, like, depending on how old the child is, right? Probably, the food and refreshments and the cake will will kind of differ. So how do you like, let's talk about the kids that are like in this, you know, one to five, one to seven? age gap? And what would you like, the most appropriate to kind of like start with,

I would say in terms of is series that correct? So you, are you asking me if like working with a caterer or vendor or what kind of things we could create for the children around this age, more

more focused on like, if you're thinking about Alright, here's, you know, a child who's like six years old, and you know, what would be some like appropriate food items to have for the right? Yes. Yes, if you're putting it together yourself,

yes, if you put it together yourself, I would say always selection, the finger foods, a lot of things people don't tend to realize is the pretty cutting process of everything that needs to happen from these finger foods or, you know, grapes that need to be kind of have put to the side, carrot sticks, cucumber sticks, little snap bites or finger sandwiches. So you have variation of those ham and cheese, something very, very simple, like to spread throughout. And then if you want to create something that's memorable that gets your guests excited. This is where the research comes in, that I was speaking to before, Pinterest, church BPPV sort of things. You can even ask AI now to create, you know, a custom menu based off the people that will be attending your party, what kind of food you want to serve, and so forth. It's always always about prompting them. So if you go into chat, TPT, you log in, you go into the textbox. It's all about how you prompt so you could say like this act the acting as a food nutritionist for a six year old, I'm planning a birthday party, and I want to serve really nice, healthy food ball. So we have a dinosaur theme come up with some concepts to help us along this theme. And it will help you guide you through a menu and how to plan that menu for obviously, your dinosaur themed birthday party for six year olds. This is the sort of thing that you can utilize to your advantage. I have delved into different topics like that before. And you can find those guys. Obviously, throughout budget bashing, we have tea party, we have tea party, Tea Party superheroes, Pirate pirates and mermaids and that sort of thing, trying to get your get your mind wrapped around the design process of your party. So what kind of steps you need to take so you DIY decorations that in your food selection. And finally, kind of maybe favors or mementos that you want to give away from your party. And I think wrapping back to what you said around the robin, back to what you said around the food. I believe that if you are to create children's items, you should also think about the adults because they want to have a fun time too, don't they? So looking about what items we can use as a centerpiece? So can we create like a dinosaur? Vegetable board kind of shaped us like a mouth? And how do we do that? We want to research on Instagram and Pinterest and utilize these platforms and, you know, technology to come up with these ideas and craziness on your own. But like you said, I think the biggest thing in terms of finances depending on your budget, are you able to splurge or are you able to save on food. So if you're able to splurge on food and you want to hire a vendor, they might have a discount for child portions. So you might not have to pay for a full portion, you might be able to pay for a child's portion. And then let's just say you have 25 guests coming but 10 of which are children, you don't need a portion for 25 But you don't need to quote for 25 You need to quote for like 10 children and maybe five adults because you know not everybody's gonna want a full sandwich and a full helping of the food. So it's something that you can like think about when it comes with budgeting and how you're going to serve your food. I don't think you need to go OTT and buy like a serving for every single person unless it's a child you kind of want to do that for them. But if it's like adults do we just need like posters and sandwiches and you know cold little things or can we just like walk into pizza for us and then do the kid stuff. So that's where you can save money. You can have you all your friends over that you know your mom friends and you're just going to do like a pizza, you know for the adults or just make sure the kids ate because your budget slower or something like that. I don't think at least in the UK culture is a little bit different, where when you go to a kid's party, the adults don't really get fed. Like, it's just kids food, and then you eat the food. I don't know if it's any different in the US, because obviously I haven't been a mom over there. But I, from what I remember, it used to be like, you know, everybody ate everything. It was a family style ordeal. Also saying that a big money saver would be obviously potluck. So this concept of potlucks is kind of what I brought over to the UK. Recently, we recently have a Halloween party because it wasn't a child's birthday party. I didn't feel obligated to like supply everything. I was inviting other children from the school and their parents. So I just asked them to bring like a Halloween theme dish to past and everyone got excited because they were able to like look on Pinterest and social media and create their only little Halloween dish. You can sort of do that for birthday parties or anything kids bashes as well as mom, you know, Mom, can you actually make like the dinosaur thing? And I'm trying to save time and money because I'm obviously planning the whole thing. And biggest like time constraint is food. prepping the food before the party. Can you help me? Could you like maybe? Help me a little in that area? Be creative with me? I don't, I don't feel like it's a soul power to ask either. Obviously, you don't want to be asking your friends to bring food to your kid's birthday, but maybe it can bring drinks. It can bring like the Capri Sun sort of thing. And that's it. I'll save some money if you've got like the whole class coming over.

Agree? Yes, that's actually a really clever idea. I didn't think about that. Like how am I going to be asking my guests to bring something but yeah, the way you put it sounds really like innocent like, oh, just help me help me out. Because it's a lot of a lot of things to undertake. I like, Do you have a

birthday party? Let's say in the summer in the in the Christmas holidays? Could you do your kid's birthday party as like a cookie exchange sign so like all the kids get to come over decorate cookies. The moms get to bring like a cookie to the class or something. You know, make it like a mom group as you're socializing you're making trying to make friends you know, get putting yourself out there a little bit work and say, Oh, I'm gonna try my like cookie recipe from America. Everyone bring a cookie to pass and we'll all go home with like something unique and then the kids can decorate cookies. And then you can you can utilize that really. For December birthdays even though people hate them for birthdays, there's a lot of like cool and unique things and concepts you can kind of create around a child's birthday to still make it memorable or tradition.

A great I'm wondering I think we should we should definitely talk about or a little more about is like, creating experiences like so this year. The reason I haven't really planned anything anything big yet for my son is because we're going away, we go into Lego Land. It's like a Disneyland. But for for all things. Lego I have not been, but he's been asking for it. And he's just been obsessed with building Legos. And so it's um, you know, that sounds like a great idea. And it feels a lot lighter on me for some reason, just because I don't have to frantically run around and, and try to come up with all of this stuff. So let experiences right? Because I think and he's totally fine with that. I mean, the five year old quite, doesn't really understand. He knows who's gonna have this experience. You know, it's his birthday party. So it's not like, well, where's my birthday party? You know, because now I'm back with my friends. So how can you like, incorporate more of that it doesn't have to be as grand because it's not cheap, frankly, to go to, you know, either Disneyland or any of these amusement parks. But there's other ideas. So how do you incorporate this, the more experience in all of this versus, like, focus so much on on all of these little details where at the end of the day, like kids just want attention, right? They want you with them? Yeah,

so I actually took my child away to a place called Alton Towers for his fourth birthday. And with my best friend, we went without the dads, with other partners, and we took our kids and you know, Weston, my son is like married to this little girl. So they're just they grew up together. And he kind of they both have a safe birthday around the same time. I'm like, let's just go away. Let's not find any birthday parties. Let's not fast, let's just go have like, a weekend away kind of with the kids. They loved it. They had like little presents to open in the hotel room. They slept in the bathtub, like for five minutes, they jumped on the bed, they went to the amusement park and that was their birthday. You can do that with other things as well. You can do that with your family or with a friend. You know, depending on how old they get. So when they get to about like 13 I remember going away to like a waterpark for my birthday with my best friend. And that was way more way more better. I think a lot of children's relationships as they grow tend to fluctuate, they might have just one you know, one friend that they kind of hang out with, and they don't really want to have you throw the idea of them of having a birthday party because maybe they don't have like all the friends in the class. You know, they're they're vibing with the minute or anything like that. And I think that's okay, just creating a special moment. My mom actually used to do a Valentine's Day and Valentine's Day Ah well we we just go get like a Little Debbie Snacks, what ETV and like have a little get together with me my friend. And I remember those moments over these over lavish birthday party because I didn't grow up with a lot of money I, we did like special things growing up. But those were more or less like the special things she used to create before Pinterest. He used to just do theme dates. So yeah, it's just, it's just those little tiny experiences but definitely will make a bigger difference. I think when they're one the the memory is more for your family for the birthday party. So do you remember when we had our first birthday? Yeah, we had like the family over I remember the second not so much. Third not so much. needed the staple birthday parties? And I think one is one I think definitely 13 and 16 and 18. But I was a birthday person. I loved them. And I you know, I'm a parent. My parents wasn't a fan. But I would I would throw myself with being birthday. I don't care. I'd love it.

Yeah. So it depends on your personality to one year. One concept you mentioned too, and I'm kind of like trying to explore this a little bit. Like I've had friends who were really creative where they held the parties, but I feel like gosh, like I kept thinking of like, gosh, you are so lucky because your kids birthdays were like in the summer or you know, in the spring and like, give me some creative ideas when it when it's like December. So like any community like where like if you're looking for a place right in the colder months, what would be some some ideas that you may have families? Like, where would you go?

I think this would be a really hard geographical question. Because when I remember, I grew up in Wisconsin, so we really didn't have any other options other than like the basement, or like our friend's house that was bigger, and their basement combo party. That was kind of the options that we had to utilize. And obviously your friend group and who you know, and who has a basement, it's not so much the essence of where it is, it's what you can create around it. So like if you're doing a basement party, maybe you can do like a campaign where you can set up tents in the basement and pretend you really got to camp out in the middle of winter, it's utilizing the place that you want to be in the things that you want to be doing. But putting that in a situation where you already are at where we are at. So in England, we have village halls and halls that can be rented out like per hour or per four hour block. And they usually have a kitchen. So another place like this would be like a church. And they could up utilize their space as well. It depends really what kind of budget you have. Because you can go for like, you know, the wedding venue, places where you would hire out, you can utilize Airbnb. So if you're having like a little sleepover, just finding a cozy little nook, if you don't really have the space for all those teenagers, it kind of is, is what you make it and it's just being crafty and utilizing what you already have available to you.

Yes, no, I liked a lot of those suggestions like, also, community centers or like, I feel like around, you know, like maybe if you live in a neighborhood that has, like, you know, some communities have like a pool house or like there's like a space that you can utilize not everybody but like I've seen people get creative with that too. And and you're right it is it is really not where you go, it's like more or what you make out of it. But it's an idea, right? Because next time you're like, oh my gosh, where should we go? Maybe I'm asking the question for myself.

I mean, like it depends on how many people you really have coming in, doesn't it? Yeah. So if it's your whole family and your extended family, you definitely need a whole like we had family Christmas parties. And we always had to go to like a church hall because there was seven brothers and sisters on my dad's side. So it was just massive amounts of people. But they obviously videoclips a church, you know, somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody, that's what you're gonna say save it at the end of the day. But if you end up having to dish it out, you're gonna have to cut your numbers aren't you really if you don't have availability to have anywhere bake or, you know, if it's just at your house, everybody can cram it and have a little cozy, cozy style thing. But it's, it's your comfortability, really. And it's just having the resources, resources on how to be creative with what you have, like I said, looping back to the basement concept of, you know, pitching tents and having like a camp camp, whoever kind of day where you do like little activities downstairs and you sleep in the tents inside or something when they want the theme, you know, but like you said, I think social media technology is a huge aspect of combating that creative block.

I like that one thing that I think Tony Robbins said this. It's not what resources you have. I don't know if I'm paraphrasing this, right, but it's something that isn't the resources you have. It's how resourceful you are. Exactly. It's like and I feel like and I feel like this conversation has given me more permission to be resourceful versus like, ah, and I mean again, I know we're all busy as parents, you know, life happens. So Allah so it's like giving yourself like this A space to be okay with, hey, maybe this this year, the party's not as grand as you may have thought in your mind because the kids don't know. But you've created a lot of memories. And I don't know you. But for me, those are the most important things that your way.

If you don't have the resources financially to splurge on, you know, hiring someone else to do all the work, scale it back, except that except that it's not going to be what you desperately want it to be. But at the end of the day, it's not like you said about resourcefulness. It's not about creating something that is, you know, luxury gland, Instagram worthy all the time, because it's draining, no one wants to do that. And I think people are starting to step away from that age of, you know, FOMO comparison, you can accept that it's there. I'm not going to deny that we're like, kind of just forget about it. It's there. You're on it. You're looking at it constantly, every day. It's just being resourceful on how to combat that in your mind. So yes, I want to candycane thing big birthday party. No, it's not going to be like this massive King fame, like balloon sat everything full on, but maybe it's just like, Oh, we've made ourselves like candy sushi. And that's a candy fame. And that's cute. And everybody got to like, be involved in that process. Or we created something crafty DIY for your candy cane birthday party. But we didn't just throw it away. Because the party's over. And it was made out of cardboard. You know, we like took our time together doing this. And now we're going to keep it in your bedroom. It was like momento, and you're gonna have the candy cane thing birthday blank for a year, you know, that sort of thing that you can do with your kid to make the party last longer than just the day? That's

today? Yeah. So I feel like these these over time as kids get older, like the what you do and how you you know, kind of set up and how you celebrate all of these things are teaching them right. These are life lessons that they get to take away with them as they grow up. So at least for me, I feel like that's, that's where I want to spend my energy. The most going forward. So with your blog, tell us what is coming out what, where everybody can find it, and how do they get their hands on it? Yes. So

Budget Bash is a guide to planning kids parties on a budget, basically, simple, plain and simple. Use the hash tag, if you end up, you know, planning the party using the guide, you can get the guide on Amazon. It's on presale right now on Kindle for 9.99. And then the paperback is only 12 pounds, I wanted to make this you know as affordable as possible, because it's a budget guide, it just doesn't make sense to you know, charge everything. And I'm basically taking off, I just want to provide this for, you know, parents, Amazon obviously has their own sort of fees that they take, but I'm not taking anything outside of like, I think two pounds something and I just want people to have that I would just want people to spread the word. You know, obviously, if they get their hands on their paper, paper book copy, then they're able to keep that. And the back of the copy. There's budget worksheets. So you can actually dive into like planning out your budget. So you have sheets and sheets you've about I think six sheets and total that gives you a sample budget of what I spent in the past and several budget of what you know I can look at doing in the future. And then having a few extra pages for themselves to kind of write down on the right person. So rip out write down and use it to guide them throughout their budget planning process when they're party planning using the guide.

That's awesome. I am so excited to kind of see what what all your budget line items are. But that's maybe me of the financial planner. Awesome. So how can our listeners connect with you Elizabeth?

Yes, I'm on Instagram at bethbringsthebash is quite a unique one I kind of came up with while I was waiting but really Yes. Let's just change it all. I love it. Yeah, so find me on Instagram. I'm also on Tik Tok at Elizabeth J. Kate's and I create guides on there mainly videos. So things I've seen on Tik Tok, and I recreate them and it's fine. And I also had fun on there too. But you can find me on both. Awesome.

All right. We'll include all of this in the show notes. Before we close any last minute thoughts.

Thank you so much for having me. I hope I do you proud with my financial class in my budget. So I'm looking forward to sending you a copy.

Awesome. Thank you.

Thank you. Bye bye