I actually threw this Brilliantly Frugal Baby Shower for my best friend 4 years ago. However, I still get asked regularly how I managed to do this for only $100 while I was underemployed. I had a blast making this baby shower happen with and for my friends and definitely had lots of help.
Brilliantly Frugal Baby Shower Tip #1: Spread Out the Cost and Labor
It’s completely okay to ask for help with paying, providing items, or taking ownership of takes. I spent about $100 on decorations, plates, utensils, cups, party favors, snacks, and games. I asked her sister to take care of the cake. Another friend purchased all of the food for the pizzas as a gift. Our friend’s mom volunteered to make the pizzas. A ton of friends helped put together the decorations; including putting together bee balloons, decoration bubble party favors, yellow sunflower arrangements, and fluffing yellow puffballs. They also helped with putting up the decorations before the baby shower began. It was a lot of work with many hours spend DIYing decorations and putting them up. However, all of our friends were willing and asking to help.
If you have someone asking to help with the baby shower, absolutely take them up on it. Have them cut things out, puff out decorations, something. If they’re asking, it’s because they want something to do. Don’t brush them off or say you have it under control. Put them to work! Even if it’s a small task. You’d be surprised how much your friends want to help and quickly things will get done.
Brilliantly Frugal Baby Shower Tip #2: DIY the Decorations
Most of the decorations were from Dollar Tree – streamers, balloons, plates, napkins, forks, short dowel rods for things we crafted, sharpies, bubbles, you name it. Dollar Tree had everything in our colors and we were able to craft the decorations together.
We had paper lanterns in the garage that we got from a garage sale and never put up. We spray-painted them yellow and then glued little bees to the paper lanterns. The bees were from Dollar Tree in the flower arrangement and craft section.
We put honey nut cheerios and honeycomb cereal in large clear jars as snacks for the kids that they could grab and eat. It was extremely cost-effective, gave the kids an easy way to get a snack if they got hungry, looked really cute, and was perfectly on theme.
You can find printables of a lot of cute decorations that you can print in color and cut and glue for what you need. We printed this cute little banner on card stock paper that we had already and hot glued it to twine we got from Dollar Tree. We got so many compliments and people kept asking where we bought everything. I was super proud to tell them that most of it was DIYed!
You can find links to most of the printable pages on our Pinterest Board here.
Brilliantly Frugal Baby Shower Tip #3: Borrow a Cute Backyard
We borrowed a large backyard from a friend’s mom. She was gracious enough to let us host there and cooked pizzas for everyone in her pizza oven. She was also a beekeeper and let us give away a couple of jars of her homegrown honey as prizes for the games. Even if you don’t have a swimming pool or pizza oven outside at a friend’s house, the greenery of a backyard automatically adds to the decor. It also keeps people from feeling like they’re “cooped up” in a house. Everyone can spread out a bit better and the kids can run around more freely to get out their energy from all of the cake and snacks.
Brilliantly Frugal Baby Shower Tip #4: Make it Fun on a Budget
The baby shower included males, females, singles, couples, and kids. We tried to keep that in mind and have something for everyone so that everyone could have fun and participate and keep anyone from being bored. I found games online that would be really fun for everyone. Even better, we didn’t have to buy very much for them!
We bought cheap diapers from Dollar Tree and used small balloons to race to see who can put the diaper on the fastest. We also bought cheap bottles from dollar tree, filled them with beer, made the opening slightly bigger at the top, and gave a prize to the person that could chug beer out of the bottle the fastest. For our last game, the guys put a balloon in their shirts (we recycled the balloons left from the diaper race game) and saw who could run to the other end of the yard, gran their shoes, run back, sit down, and put them back on the fastest. All of our friends had a blast participating and watching everyone else play.
We also got coloring books, crayons, and bubbles for the kids in large batches from dollar tree. The backyard we borrowed also had a pool, so no matter what, the kids were all entertained either swimming, coloring, or blowing bubbles. They were all tuckered out at the end.
Here’s a quick peak at what it looked like all together:
For other decorating on a budget tips check out this post here.