10 Frugal Ideas for a Teddy Bear Birthday Party

My youngest turned TEN this week. Oh, my!! Little Red Riding Hood wanted a teddy bear birthday party. She loves all things teddy bear and has a huge collection of them. Here are the ideas we came up with to make her party a dream come true.

1)  We strew her Teddy bear collection all over the house and the house was instantly decorated.

2) We picked solid color plates, napkins, and tablecloth from the dollar section of our local store. She picked brown ~ for teddy bear!

3) We gave the kids juice boxes instead of cups. Then each kid's juice box was marked with their name so they could easy take it home if they didn't finish it. This decreased the waste of juice left behind. 

4) We chose a seasonal item and made a teddy bear out of it for our centerpiece. We bought our pumpkins at the grocery store for $3 for the big ones and the bag of little pumpkins totaled $4. We painted the pumpkins with brown tempera paint and made the face out of felt and wiggly eyes we had around the house. We attached the pumpkins together with Gorilla Glue (which took a long time of holding it while it dried ~ but worked great).

5) The children did  most of the decorating. They learned how to make teddy bear paper chains. 

6) We thought about bear themed food for  the snacks. We had raspberries, Post Honey-Comb Cereal, and Teddy Grahams for the snack food. 

7) We decided to have a few games on hand for the kids. We weren't sure if a bunch of 9 and 10 year old girls would want to stay in dd's bedroom and play or if they would want to do party games. We tried to think up easy and inexpensive games if they chose to just play independently. As it turned out, the kids wanted to play games. We played "Pin the Nose on the Teddy" (very popular ~ they lined up twice), Musical Teddies (same as musical chairs), and face painting by Grandma. They chose prizes of either bear stickers, tiny 30 cent bears from the craft store, or candy. The kids added their treats to their take home bag as they won them.

8) Our big expenditure was a pinata. We usually make our own but with my bad cold ~ it just wasn't happening. We ended up buying a Winnie the Pooh head. We filled it with organic gummy bears and Sun Drops wrapped in aluminum foil, nickels and pennies. I made the pinata stick from a fallen branch off a tree wrapped with crepe paper streamers. I couldn't believe how much the party store was asking for their pinata sticks!

9) We made layered teddy bear cookies as the main party favor. The kids also had their bag of treats from the games and pinata to take home. 

10) Little Red Riding Hood matched the theme in her new teddy bear dress and teddy bear socks from Grandma. 

It was a great party. What fun the kids all had planning it. Tom Sawyer came up with this adorable idea ~ Yogi the Bear eating out of a picnic basket. LOL

Little Red Riding Hood enjoyed her brownie "cake" and opening presents with some of her friends. The Lego set is a combined gift from all of her siblings. (The children are wet because I couldn't get them off the trampoline even after it started raining ~ LOL).

Blessings, Dawn