The huswife's guide to

So my littlest one turns one this week and we celebrated her birthday yesterday. It was a small party, we had four adults, two teens, and three kids not including my own and it was a lot of fun. I also didn't want to spend a lot of money on this party and tried to keep it under $100. Here's how I did.
Food - $45
We served chips, crackers, pretzels, strawberries, grapes, apples, three types of dip, homemade doughnuts, homemade cookies, and of course cake and cupcakes. We only served water as drinks and only used our regular dishes.We saved money buying no name food and making everything ourselves. The dips were Sunset Gourmet which was a bit of a splurge.

Decor - $20
Everything I either already owned or purchased at the dollar store. Table cloth, plastic bowls, cupcake stand, cupcake toppers, snowflakes, ONE decoration, trees, and balloons. Almost everything came from Dollarama!

Gifts - $25
I picked up a Melissa and Doug Puzzle on clearance a couple months ago for $5 and added in some second hand finds for another $5. I then let my older two kids choose some books from my gift collection in the basement, but since I can't remember what I paid I just added on $15 for those (they were probably less).

Activities - $3
My mom picked up a Pin the Nose on the Snowman game along with the snowman table cloth at the second hand store on bag day, so I estimate that at $1 total. We also bought a box of snowflake ornaments for the kids to decorate which cost $2.

Total - $93

So there you have it - birthdays are possible to be adorable and frugal! Can't wait for our frugal Christmas!

It was super busy day yesterday with my littlest's first birthday party so I didn't get a chance to post this, or even take a good picture, but here it is.

The easiest, most frugal, least fattening advent calendar ever. The ones with activities are super cute but we just don't have the time. My youngest is allergic to chocolate so it wouldn't be fair to buy the chocolate calendars. We do have a lot of Christmas books.

So what you need to do is just wrap up Christmas books and set them under the tree! I didn't number them so the kids can have fun picking. We did 23 since we always open one present on Christmas Eve and I found out one of the books was a repeat (two copies of The Night Before Christmas).

By using wrapping paper I bought on sale last year this project cost less then $2 and our story time last night was lovely. I think this will be out new holiday tradition.