$40 Basketball Clinic Birthday Party

Did I mention we are in full on birthday mode around our house this summer? All of our kids birthdays fall within a 3-month span!  We want our kids to feel super special while sticking to a budget.

This weekend, I guest posted on Money Saving Mom about how I plan budget-friendly parties for my kids.  Make sure to hop over and read all my tips.  Today I will be sharing how we honored Solon with his request, a basketball clinic birthday for him and his 7 friends.

Basketball Clinic Birthday Party

1. Venue

My husband’s work has a gym that we can reserve free of charge so after picking our date, I had Scott reserve the gym.   It was available and the price was just right! If you don’t have a gym to rent for free, see if you can reserve a local park basketball court or a church basketball court.  You could even host it in your own driveway.

2.  DIY Invites

My son and I went to Pinterest for inspiration (you can see all my pin-spiration here).  We found some we thought we could recreate using canva.com.

We ended up stretching a large, free image of a basketball.  You can change the colors from the original image, FYI.  We changed it from a black and white basketball to orange and black.   Then, we found a sports-looking font (graduate), typed out all the details and saved it as a .png.  We then printed 4 cards per piece of cardstock on our printer and cut them out.  My son was so excited that he hand-delivered most of the invites that afternoon!

3.  Party Gifts

I like to give party gifts that are either consumable or usable so we landed on personalized water bottles.  We picked some up at the local dollar store and then printed vinyl labels with my Silhouette.  The kids loved to help make them.  When we were finished, we stuffed them with a few packages of Solon’s favorite candy!

4.  Party Decor

We picked up basketball themed plates, napkins, and one plastic basketball table cloth for the food table (because it makes for easy cleanup) at our local party store.  Then I searched the house for other basketball themed decor I could use to decorate the space.  I  grabbed Solon’s basketball figurines (makes a great gift) as well as some little basketballs we weren’t going to use.

5.  Food

Solon’s favorite stadium food is nachos and since our party was from 9:30-11:30, we didn’t need a full meal. We served the nachos with basketball-themed cupcakes and bottles of gatorade.   Solon picked out his favorite boxed cake mix and made the cupcakes together.  Then, I used some canned orange frosting and made the cupcakes look like basketballs with some decorative black frosting. They weren’t perfect but the hungry boys gobbled them right up!

6.  Party Activities

The Mr. took care of the clinic schedule and he planned everything from a dunk contest, to a dribble derby, a 4 on 4 basketball scrimmage and around the world competition along with lots of dribbling, shooting and passing drills which took up an hour and a half of the party.  The last half hour was spent singing, eating and opening presents.

We pumped up all our basketballs and hauled them in a laundry basket to the gym.  We also asked our party guests to bring a basketball of their own too if they wished!

7. The Budget

Other supplies I had on hand included-

All in all, the party was one of our favorite parties to date.  The kids went home with smiles, sweaty and tired.  That’s what I call a win of a birthday! Best of all, the birthday boy’s party reflected him so well and he beamed with pride and excitement on his special day.   A great reminder that a ton of fun can be had on a budget!

For other birthday party inspiration – click here

Don’t forget to hop over to Money Saving Mom to read all about my money saving tips on how to throw a budget-friendly birthday party.  What budget saving tips do you have? Share in the comments.  I would love to hear from you!

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