2nd birthday

A wonderful weekend just went past. A few significant events occurred that weekend. Daylight savings just kicked in Melbourne and more importantly, my son just celebrated his second birthday. The celebrations were extremely worthwhile as it allow the family to get past a difficult 12 months. It also gave me an opportunity to get to know his friends a little better.

A few posts ago, I wrote about the Frankston Toy Library, where we hired some playground equipment at a cost of $10 for the weekend. My son and his friends loves the equipment. It was certainly $10 well spent.

That evening, I also though about other ways which we could have saved money.

1. Bake you own cake. My wife baked the two cakes for the day. We actually had two birthday celebrations. One in the morning with my son's friends, and one in the afternoon with the family. By making our own cake, we save money as the cakes only cost about $13 in raw materials. It probably save us about $25 to $30.
2. Host it in your own backyard. Our house has a nice verandah in the backyard. The verandah area was also quite large, and have enough space to house a few of the playground equipments. This gave us a nice area which we can host the party. If we had to go to a indoor gym or similar, it would have cost at least $100 for the day.
3. Make your own wrapping paper. My wife recently started a tradition where my son and her would make wrapping paper by painting a large sheet of butcher's paper. In the gift that it is wrapping, we make note of who painting the wrapping paper. We think that it gives the wrapping paper a personal touch.

In some ways, we did not try very hard to save money. I felt that because it is a birthday celebration for my son, being frugal in not is in the spirit of celebration. My wife and I were more focus on ensuring that everybody at the celebration enjoyed themselves and help to celebrate my son's journey into his third year.