{Guest Post: Children's Party Ideas}

It is my littlest's birthday in just under two weeks time! Hard to believe but she's going to be two... yikes! Where did the time go?

Anyway, this guest post from Air Inflatables, a leading UK bouncy castle sales specialist, has come at a good time as it has five fun & affordable children's party ideas.

Children love to be creative and it’s hard when you’re on a budget to provide them with activities to ensure they have fun at the party, it’s particularly difficult to keep a group of children entertained for extended periods of time too – that’s where we come in!

Here are 5 creative yet affordable ideas to keep your children entertained at their party:

Egg Decoration

Egg decoration is an old favourite that doesn’t need to be confined to Easter! It’s simple and can be very cheap too. You need a pack of eggs - free range eggs are bigger and better quality but if your budget is tight then buy a pack of chef’s eggs from the supermarket, they’re very cheap and come in large quantities! Then you need to hard boil the eggs; pop them in a pan of cool water with a tablespoon of vinegar and half a teaspoon of salt in and gently bring them to the boil (this will help to avoid cracking) then boil them for around 2 minutes, take off the heat, cover and leave for approximately 12-15 minutes. Then remove the eggs from the pan and place in a bowl of ice water to cool down, cover in a container and when they’ve cooled pop them in the fridge ready for the party. All you need now are some paints, maybe some simple colours for hair and eyes, and then get the kids to paint the eggs, this could be themselves a superhero or a princess - the possibilities are endless!

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Make your own pizza

Another fun food favourite - why not get a few readymade pizza bases from the supermarket , these shouldn’t be much more than 1 or 2 pounds and as well as great value they also come with cooking instructions on the back of the pack. Spread the base with a basic sauce; we recommend passata for a tomato sauce but you could use barbeque or even pesto. Then cover with the toppings you desire, this could be ham, pepperoni, mushrooms or mozzarella. You can literally let the kid’s imaginations run wild with this activity and you don’t need to worry about lunch either as they have arranged it for you!

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Pot a plant

We love this idea, all you need is a bag of soil (or soil from the garden) a pack of plastic party cups and some seeds. For our example we’ve picked a French breakfast radish which look great and don’t need transferring to a garden. Get your plastic cup and fill it with soil, leave an inch space at the top to avoid overflow then place a radish seed a half inch deep. Let the children know to water the plants a little every couple of days (not to put too much in) and after around 30 days the radish should poke out from the soil and be ready to eat - easy, simple and fun!

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Bouncy castles

Bouncy castles can seem to be a more expensive item at a party but we’ve found that if you have a search of your local dealers you can pick them up from as little as £45 for a couple of hours or £50 for the day which is a huge bargain considering the amount of time the children will spend on it. We think that a couple of hours is great for working up and appetite for lunch or towards the end of the party so they are ready to relax in front of a film before their parents pick them up. 

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Pencil Stationery

Another great arts and crafts activity is to buy a big pack of pencils online, it’s really simple to get bulk packs and they aren’t too pricey either (24 pencils for £2 on eBay), then get a used plastic bottle and some PVA glue, spread the glue over the bottle and stick the pencils to it with the rubbers on the bottom and the points facing upwards (make sure they’re not sharp!) then leave the pots to dry and they can now be used as stationary holders. This is a really handy activity that gets the children a useful gift and may even get them interested in their school work!

That’s our ideas for some fun and affordable children’s party ideas; the best part of it is that you don’t even need to make party bags as they’ve made their own gifts during the day! Even though you may be faced with a lot of clearing up, we think these activities are great, but we’d also like to hear what affordable, fun and creative ideas you have too so please leave any comments below.

Watch this space to see what we did in the Glasgow Mummy house for the littlest's birthday :-)