Alright - let's sum it all up now (since the party is tomorrow!)
Food: Chose a very inexpensive main course (be sure I'll post pictures and recipes if all of this stuff 'turns out', yes, you read that right, the sandwiches I'm fixing for 40+ people tomorrow have never been tried in this household... yikes!), have great mother / mother in law who are each preparing a side dish, got individual packages of chips for 50% off on the halloween sale, bought the cake / icing when they were on sale in the months prior, as well as the cookie mix, and not doing the fruit now (see why in the treatbags later).
Decor: Went with a Dr. Seuss theme, bought a few Dr. Seuss printed items and coupled that with solids at our local $1.00 store. Also bought all cups, plastic utensils, and tableware there. Printed kids coloring sheets off of the internet (cost of paper and the ink). Showing "Horton Hears a Who" which was free with swagbuck amazon gift cards (only $5 anyway through amazon), and it serves as a gift for Bryton too! Also, forgot this one, using the Kohl's cares plush animals ($5 a piece, I bought 2, my mom bought 2, and books, 2 and 2 again) as decor on tables. Bryton gets to keep these as well. Not to mention all of the other Dr. Seuss books that we already own (I literally bought some when I was like 18 on a huge lot on ebay because I wanted them for my kids later on!)
Treatbags: I used brown paper sacks, put a Dr. Seuss sticker on them, and wrote each child's name on their bag. With such a large age difference I had to do the 'baby bags' differently. Itty babies got a boardbook (sets of 2 at the dollar store for $1), bigger babies got a board book and a jar of food for their age, big kids got two suckers (halloween candy 50% off sale ;), an apple, a tiny box of raisins (10 for 10 for the bags of 15 little boxes at our Kroger this week), and a thing of bubbles (.50 for 6 containers on the clearance rack at Wal-Mart). The theme for the Treatbags: All of Bryton's favorite things. I wanted to put things in the bag that he really liked to share with his friends!
Gift: This is one I haven't talked about yet. Here is where swagbucks comes in again... you guys have heard me talk about it. Aaron and I decided in about August that we wanted to get B a tricycle, a real tricycle with pedals and all, for his birthday this year. We found the one we liked on Amazon, and I started saving swagbucks. Within about 6 weeks I'd saved the $50 or so in Amazon gift cards needed to buy him that tric ;) He also is getting all of the previously mentioned books, dvd's, plush animals, etc. PLUS, I ordered him Dr. Seuss' birthday book for his guests to sign :) Should be fun!
Check back for pictures soon!
-a
Very well written!
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