Free Entertainment For Your Child's Birthday

Instead of spending a small fortune for a clown or other cartoon characters for your child's birthday, have all the parents or some of your friends dress up as wacky characters or fantasy characters instead!

Not only will this make the party fun and interesting, it won't cost you a dime! Especially if you have the parents use halloween costumes from previous years (as long as they aren't the scary ones). You can also opt to have the adults purchase and wear costumes instead of giving your child a gift -- that is a gift in itself...keeping money in your pocket instead of burning a hole in it.

Cool!

Birthday Cakes on the Cheap!

Wanna save on your child's Birthday Cake? The best way to save money on Birthday cakes or other special occasion cakes is to make them yourself! Become the mom of all trades and take a cake decorating class and you will find so much joy in making the cakes yourself. You can also get very extravagant with cupcakes and tiered cakes and not spend a fortune. A great website for novice cake decorators is http://www.cakecentral.com/ and http://www.wilton.com/

Another great tip is to get your cake or cupcakes from Sam's Club or Cotsco. Here in Michigan, cupcakes are only $11 for 24 cupcakes, and they are extremely nice. 1/2 Sheet Cakes are only $15 when you grab and go (they will write on the cake for free), or you can order a custom cake for only $19.99.

I must tell you that Cotsco has the best sheet cakes. Although I am a Sam's Club fan, I will hunt down someone who has a Cotsco card that I can use to purchase a cake from there when I don't feel like baking a cake. The membership is about $40, but it pays for itself if you shop there every month like I do.