Thrifty Pirate Party

For my sons birthday this year we decided to have a pirate theme. He is just slightly obssessed with pirates at the moment thanks to Jake and the Neverland Pirates!

 As always I hate spending money so I needed to come up with some money saving ideas, as parties can be pretty expensive events these days. Once you've paid for all of the food, decoration, party bags and cake it all adds up. To try and save some money I always aim to make as many of the decorations as I can, like for example the cups...

I brought a massive pack of Tesco value plain white cups which cost pennies. I then printed off the above image from the web (I cannot find the original source for this, if it's you please shout). I then cut it out and stuck it onto all of the cups. It was quite time consuming but worth it I think. As cups with pre-printed design on can cost you around £2.00 for a pack of 8 where as I only paid 55p for a pack of 25!

 I also stuck some on some old beer bottles that we had lying around ready for recycling, just to add some more decoration to the table.

Like my daughters Enchanted Forest Party that we had last year I made up name labels for all of the food. This is the fun bit...

I made the labels myself by printing off images from the web and sticking them all together. The little flags I brought online and I believe they cost me about £2 for a pack of 50!

I also wanting to get some healthy food in there somewhere...

 The party food doesn't have to be expensive, if you shop around you can find some great deals. I personally like to use a lot of the value range party foods that you can find in most supermarkets. Kids don't care in the slightest about how much the food cost. Here's the party boy enjoying his value party snowballs...

I started to worry about finding my son a pirate outfit for the day. Every pirate outfit I found online seemed to cost between £15 - £25 which is way more than I was prepared to spend on an outfit that he would only wear once! Until luck would have it I went into our local charity shop on my weekly recky and came across a pirate outfit and it was only £1...

For the table decorations I was able to use the paper plates that we had left over from my daughters party and make it work with the new theme, from toadstools to pirates. I also brought a few bags of gold coins in advance at Christmas in our local pound shop to scatter across the tables. The gold on the table were rocks from the garden that I spray painted with gold spray, again form the pound shop...

For the party bags I brought the red and white striped paper bags online at very low cost. I printed the name labels off on my computer and stuck them on. I then just used some string I had at home to tie them off. I thought they turned out pretty good...

So there you have it, a thrifty pirate party. I think everyone enjoyed themselves...

I'm linking up with Faith, Hope and Charity Shopping's linky Ta Dah Tuesday