Need Cheap Ideas for Son's 2Nd Bday

If you have a lot of people and a small house or appartment, try local parks. I know Richardson and Plano residents can reserve a covered picnic area of any park of the city for free, though you might want to plan ahead to have the first choice of location and date.
If you don't have time for cooking, fruits, healthy munch such as cut pita bread and humus, baby carrots, salad, cold sandwiches would do. Games for kids could be balls, water balloons, bike race with obstacles, running race.
You don't need to spend a lot of money to have a great party. Organization is more important in my opinion.
Good luck.

QA

One of the cheapest, and most fun, parties I've had was the "Messiest Birthday Ever" party. I filled our kiddie pool with bubbles, later pulling out the toddler slide so they could slide into the bubbles. I used our water table to hold "goo" (a recipe made of cornstarch and water). A friend's son helped by setting up a Tattoo table. Instead of cake I made little Dirt Cups. I did serve lunch so that was the most expensive part. The best part was everyone stayed outside and clean up was a snap!

Hot dogs are always a very inexpensive way to feed a lot of people, especially if you buy them at Sams or Costco. I went to a Luau party the other day and they had some blow up pools in their back yard, a slip and slide, some water guns, and a sand box. My daughter had a blast, and the adults mingled and had a really good time. Get some Popsicles for the kids and watermelon/cantaloupe for the adults (and kids) and they will have a great time.

How about a jungle theme? You could check out leopard or any kind of lion print material at Wal-mart and if you can't afford enough for tablecloths, you could buy some and make table runners. You could pick up some little bags of jungle animals and decorate cup-cakes or a cake with a jungle theme, you could hang stuffed jungle animals throughout the house, you could have animal cookies in little cups on the table for the kids. Invite the grown-ups to get into it by wearing jungle print clothes. You could look up jungle faces on the internet and make a couple of templates and then have the kids make their own
faces with construction paper. EX: Have some round circles cut out for heads, have some cut-outs for ears and noses and have different eyes available. This could be their craft to take home. Buy white lunch sacks and decorate them with leopard spots or zebra stripes and this could be their goody bags to take home. Scrunch butcher's paper into long twisty vines and decorate the table area with them to resemble vines.
Have fun with it and be creative!

We had my daughter's 2nd birthday party at home, and it was easy and cheap and fun. She was obsessed with Elmo at the time, so I bought Elmo plates and cups and napkins, got Elmo party favors, baked an Elmo cake (which was easy for me, since I decorate cakes, but you could just as easily get a plain cake and put some small Elmo decorations or candles on it), and made pizza. I had a big bowl of mixed goldfish and pretzels for the kids, along with carrot sticks, celery sticks, and fruit. Decorating was easy, since we had so many Elmo dolls and toys already. I set them around the party area, put a cheap plastic Elmo tablecloth on the kids' craft area (they got to make their own party hats, but you could also have them decorate their own Elmo pictures), and we were set. My daughter is nearly 5 now, so that party was nearly 3 years ago, and one of my friends told me just last night how much she liked my homemade pizza! Message me if you want the recipe--it is so easy, and you can partially bake the crusts in advance and store them flat in your freezer.

Shaved ice is loved by ALL ages!

www.DFWsno.com

Good Luck!

What about cake, punch, and a few toys out for the little ones to enjoy while the adults visit? Keep it simple-- the children will just enjoy exploring another child's toys. Or-- meet up at a park & have cupcakes.

Hi there! How about a local park? I don't know exactly where you are located but I know of several that have covered eating areas that would be nice and some even have covered play areas. Maybe do it in the morning or the evening and avoid the hot afternoon, but I just went to one for a one year old at a park and it was A LOT of fun! They did lots of fruit, cheese and crackers, lemonade and water. I think they should have thrown in something a little more substantial like a pasta salad or hot dogs cause there were mostly adults there and we got hungry... but the kids had a blast! That would be cheap but fun!!

Good luck and happy birthday to your little one!

K.
Helping MOMS work from home!
http://www.stayinghomeandhavingfun.com

For my son's second birthday we just ended up having it at home, making the cake and icing and getting all of our decorations from Dollar Tree. We chose Blue and red as our colors, bought streams put them all over the house, bought a huge $10 bag of assorted party favors and gave them out. Then we got pin the tail on the donkey ($2 at Wal-mart in the party section) He was a bit older (6) but we had lots of games and activities, I got away with a party for 25 poeple under $100

For my daughter's first birthday, we covered the floor of our home with balloons and just let the guests (ages 1-5)run through them, catch them, and sit on them! My daughter went around for weeks shouting, "Pop!" and laughing hysterically. We did soap bubbles outside, and even had a balloon decorated cake. The kids had so much fun and it was very cheap.

I agree with Amy G. You can have it at home so the infants can be cool, sit on the rug, whatever. And then you don't have to lug stuff back and forth to a park. We had all 3 of my kids' 2nd Bday parties at home. They enjoed the decorations, the company, the presents, the cake. No big fuss is needed! Have it between meals and just serve cake and drinks. Inexpensive.