I love throwing myself into planning parties, especially when it’s one of the girls birthday birthdays, but I know a lot of people get stressed, overwhelmed and don’t know where to start, so I hope this is a little helpful

Where I always start, So first I figure out what kind of a party it will be, will it be at home with some family and a few friends, will it be at a local trampoline park, a day out or a big party will all their class mates from school, where a hall would have to be hired.

In my case for Ella’s 7th birthday, she’s never had a big party with any friends from school before, and this year for the first time she has a lovely group of friends in her class who she wanted to come, so I decided to hire a hall and have a big party for her.

Before looking for somewhere, I decide on a date, Saturdays I find are always better, the closest Saturday to the actual birthday, and figure out the length of the party you want, this time I went for 3 hours, but I would say anywhere between 2-4 hours is plenty.

So all I do is literally google local community halls in my area, then I’ll have a look and see what space I think suits the amount of people I have, what it looks like and if it’s close by. Then I email the contact for the hall and book.

Once you have the date and the hall is booked, I decide on a theme, well I ask what they would like, Ella chose a huggy wuggy/kissy missy theme this year. Apart from the fact that I couldn’t find that much on the market in the uk that was that theme, it can also be really expensive to buy branded products. So what I tend to do it pick 3 or 4 colours from the theme, so in this case I picked blue, yellow, pink and red. So instead of buying themed paper plates, cups etc, I chose one of the colour for the table clothes, one for the plates, cups, cutlery and serviettes. (I get all mine on Amazon and eBay)

One little tip too, if you want to make your tables look a bit better, I always have a tablecloth and table skirt, I get them on Amazon, but just fyi I always use double sided tape as the adhesive on them isn’t great.

Then I decide on entertainment, for This party I found this company Party Monsters who turned out to be amazing and I’m so happy I came across them while scrolling on Instagram one day. We had a 3 hour mini monster party and had the entertainer Craig, he played music and played games for the whole 3 hours, and the kids absolutely loved it, and it also meant that I didn’t have to entertain the kids myself, and was free to enjoy the party. There’s of course so many other options, you could make a Spotify playlist and play that through a speaker and do games yourself like pass the parcel, musical statues, hire a bouncy castle, face painter etc.

I also bought an arch backdrop and cake stand from Cardboard Kustomz which I’ve never done before but definitely had the wow factor that I wanted, I’m actually going to keep it and try to cover it to fit future party themes to save myself money.

Then I hired My night under the stars to make a balloon display for the backdrop and cake board, she was great and even set up the backdrop and cake stand for me. I do know how to make balloon garlands and balloon number displays myself, but I knew I wouldn’t have the time and it would be too stressful, but I will be making some reels on my Instagram and TikTok soon with tutorials on how to make them yourself to save money, so make sure you’re following me and don’t miss them.

The cake is another thing that can get very expensive, in my case I love making them myself and have made some for family and friends. There’s quite a few options that will suit all different budgets, you can of course find a cake maker and buy/order a cake, you can buy an already decorated cake from either a supermarket, somewhere like cake box or a fresh cream one from someone like yasar halim, you could also buy buy a plain sponge and decorate one yourself, with either buttercream or fondant or make the whole thing from scratch.

Last but not least are the party bags, I got paper bags from Amazon in blue for huggy wuggy and pink for kissy missy, Millie loves making slime and has so much stuff to make it, so she made little pots of slime to go in each of the party bags which was amazing, I made little stickers for them saying huggy wuggy slime or missy missy slime made by Millie on them, using Picsart, sticker paper and my printer. Ella and the kids in her class love fidgets so I got a bulk pack of 30ish keyring fidgets from amazon to go in them too, along with a ring pop and packet of haribo. I sealed the bags with little round stickers I also made in the same way as the slime stickers.

I hope that’s been helpful and you can also leave me a comment or send me a dm on Instagram Instagram orTikTok .