My son Jona loves the Royals, so he was thrilled when I suggested we throw him a KC Royals birthday party for his third birthday this year. Party planning tends to stress me out, so while I wanted to have fun with the theme, I also wanted to keep it as simple as possible. Here are my tips for a stress-free Royals party.
{Tip 1} Pick a few things to feature. There is a lot of generic baseball-themed party decor out there, so I used that for the majority of my decorations. However, I wanted to choose a few things that would be specifically Royals, too. For party invites, I found a shop on Etsy that sells invitations that look like tickets for any Major League team. Jona loved sending out invitations that looked like real baseball tickets, and the cost was not much more than you’d spend on any other kind of invite. I also picked up some inexpensive Royals temporary tattoos that the kids could apply at the party.
{Tip 2} Choose no-stress DIYs. To save money, I’m a fan of doing a mix of store-bought and homemade items (that’s the case for food as well). For goodie bags, I just bought plain white sacks and drew on some laces and “KC” to make them look like baseballs. SO easy. I also saw a cute party favor on Pinterest that was a yo-yo painted to look like a baseball. This one took a little longer (since I had to wait for paint to dry) but it was still incredibly easy.
Other general stress-saving strategies:
{Tip 3} Don’t host a party during meal times. If you choose a mid-morning or afternoon party, you don’t have to worry about feeding your guests a meal. For an afternoon party, I served cake (I made cookie cake) and a couple of other snack items (popcorn and pretzel rods) and called it good.
{Tip 4} Know which things stress you out and plan accordingly. For me, especially being pregnant this year, I didn’t want to try to have the party at our house. Letting the kids run around outside didn’t sound like a bad idea, but since Jona’s birthday is in August, I knew it could be hot and miserable. Therefore, I chose to have his party at a gym (we went with 360 Gymnastics in Olathe) to save myself some stress. The kids had a great time, and I didn’t have to worry about entertaining them. You do have to spend a little more for that, but I cut back in other areas (like making the cake instead of ordering one).
Do you have any tips to make kids birthday parties less stressful?
