Budget birthday bash

Five days before Nienna's eight birthday she asked if she could have a party, despite it being off party year and off pay week.  Since it was due to the fact that she has made two new friends through Girl Guides I gave in and agreed we could do a small afternoon tea.
We had already invited her best friend for the day so we ended up with a total of four girls and set the day for today.  It was a raging success and due to being dead broke economically challenged this week I think I did pretty well.  All up I spent $25.  This does not include the value of materials/food I had in the house, just the cost of extras I had to buy.

As a rule I always steer clear of those plastic gift bags and fillers for parties.  They are ugly, plastic, expensive, plastic and well I think you get the idea.  I like to use either paper bags decorated or similar.  Due to pinterest I have been finding lots of nifty things and particularly liked the idea of the newspaper carry bag.  I found this linked tutorial and had a go.  I think they came up really well.

Next were the fillers. I made some little flower brooches using scrap yarn and the i-cord method, added a choc frog, a small bead bracelet I got at the CWA market for $1 and a sugar cookie pinata.

More than enough for take home.  They also had a pen/pad gift from the pass the parcel game.

As we had done birthday cake twice already for the week I went with cupcakes and first party activity was for the girls to decorate them.  They loved it and it saved me a job!

I set the table up all fancy, with water glasses, wine glasses with frozen strawberries for the sugar free fizz and my nanna's table linen.                              

                                                                   High tea for four!

fairy bread pinwheels, marbled sugar cookies (left over from pinata dough), nutella sangers, deep dish cookie pie, mini scones, fruit plate and mini sausage rolls.