Snowman Church Christmas party - budget friendly

We had a Christmas party for 500 people, so feeding them dinner, decorating and providing entertainment had to be budget friendly.  Very simple, nothing fancy. 

 We have a lot of children at our church, so we needed something on the tables to keep them occupied during the entertainment and while waiting for their food.  I wanted coloring pages on each table, but a way to incorporate it into a centerpiece, also.  To stay with the snowman theme, I hot glued black puff balls (on both sides) and tied red fabric around the neck of a quart canning jar and put Christmas coloring pages in the jar (I put 10 in each jar, per table).  To make it cheaper, I bought coloring books from the Dollar Store and pulled pages out of the books and put them in the jar.  More time consuming, but worth it to save a few bucks (it actually saved me $30).  I bought the little red cups from the Dollar Store to hold the crayons. Red doily underneath, also from the Dollar Store.  If it had been closer to the beginning of school, it would have been cheaper to buy the crayons at a big box store.

 Instead of the usual red for a Christmas party, I went with the light sea foam blue table cloths. I worried that white would be plain, and the sea foam reminded me of icicles...

 On either side of the stage I made tall snowmen out of poster board.  They were about 3 1/2 feet tall.  It took 2 poster baords for each snowmen.  I had a different snowflake quote for each and had them printed off at Staples as an Engineer print.  It was about $3 for the print (this is the smallest engineer print out of the 3 Staples offers).  I love Staples Engineer prints - its awesome how big they are, and they are so cheap!

 A cheap backdrop was made from red tablecloths hung on the wall with tape. You can't tell from this pic, but the snowflakes are glittery silver - bought at the Dollar Store.  I printed the photo props off of Pinterest - onto cardstock to make sure it was sturdy enough to last the night -  and taped them to thin dowels I bought at Walmart.

 I had the young girls in our church make snowflakes for the wall decorations.  They were so excited to point out their snowflakes!  I just bought a ream of white copy paper and gave it to their activity leader, they made the snowflakes, I picked them up the next week and pinned them to the wall.

I wanted something in the foyer as the church members walked in, and found a snowman tree similar to this on Pinterest.  Bought the tree for $30 at Walmart, used my daughters black boots, bought a top hat at Zurchers for under $5, hot glued black fuzzies for eyes and mouth, made a nose out of construction paper, scarf from home, and red ornaments for the buttons.  You can't see it from this picture, but I used twigs I found at my neighborhood park for the arms.

Easy Halloween Banner - Construction paper

I got the idea after wandering around the craft store and seeing felt banners. Construction paper seemed easier then felt. The triangle are all made out of construction paper and we cut out the eyes, mouths, etc out of construction paper, too.  Super easy craft.  I just used black yarn and stuck command strips to either end of my mantel to hang it.

Simple Frozen Themed birthday cake

A cake doesn't get any more simple then this.  My little one wanted a Frozen themed birthday cake, so this is what she got.  She chose her favorite flavor of boxed cake mix, which I cooked then let cool. Then I frosted it with store bought, purple frosting (I love that you can buy colored frosting!), I put a large plastic snowflake on top of the cake that I found at the Dollar Tree (they have an amazing selection of snowflakes).  Then, sprinkled some of the decorating sprinkles (that came with the frosting) on top, and I was done!  Super easy, but also pretty cute.

Taco Pockets

We love this simple little meal that I found here on pinterest.  The only thing is that I use a biscuit for the top and bottom - I pinch them together.  I think if I bought the larger biscuits then it would work to just fold them over. Also, I used 3/4 lb hamburger and half of a taco seasoning packet and it made 15 little taco pockets (because of the smaller biscuit size?) So, I buy 3 rolls of biscuits, not one when I make these. 

Taco Pockets

Ingredients

• 1 pound ground beef, browned and drained
• 1 packet taco seasoning plus required ingredients for tacos (usually just water)
• Cheese of your choice
• 1 roll Biscuits

Instructions

1. Follow directions on the taco seasoning to make taco meat. (usually taco seasoning and water)
2. Flatten biscuits into a flat 6″ round shape
3. Add a tablespoon (or so) of the taco mixture onto middle of the flattened biscuit.
4. Add cheese on top.
5. Fold over the biscuit and seal edge. If you can’t seal all the way around, just do one small area in the center.
6. Cook according to the directions on the biscuits.
7. Eat and enjoy!! You can either cut these and use a fork or pick them up like a taco. Either way is delicious

Card board gingerbread houses "Gingerboard houses"

We never eat the gingerbread houses that we make, and I get frustrated making the gingerbread, and when I have used graham crackers instead, I get frustrated with how easily they break.

So, last year I decided to use cardboard, instead.  We have a lot of cardboard from cereal boxes or amazon prime boxes (especially at Christmas time).  So, I just cut those up in the sizes that I wanted and made "gingerboard houses" .  We did it again this year and I will do it from here on out.

Can you even tell the difference?

 

I got lazy this year and didn't "finish" the roofs.  But, my kids didn't complain...

Sugar Cone Tee Pee

For Activity Days, I was trying to find a fun little craft for the girls to do.  This took on a life of its own - I had no idea the girls would like it so much. 

I bought sugar cones, then used my serrated knife to cut the tip off.    I made enough for my group of Activity days girls (I think I made a couple extra just in case).  I then covered little pieces of cardboard with foil and so the girls could put their tee pee on it as they decorated.

All I took for decorating was royal icing that I colored brown with food coloring (it HAS to be royal icing), pretzels, skittles and Hershey's chocolate bars.  That is it!  I had Ziploc bags that I cut the tip off of one side and I filled with royal icing.  They used these to put the icing in the top of the cone, and then stuck their pretzels in the top.  Then they decorated it like they would a gingerbread house.  Honestly, the three items I brought for them was enough to keep them occupied for 20 minutes.  Much longer than I had anticipated.   And, they turned out cute, in my opinion!

My Favorite things party (on the cheap)

For our January Relief Society Enrichment activity, we had a "My Favorite Things" party.  There are so many awesome ideas on Pinterest - you can find pretty much any printable download you desire!  We needed to make this party cheap, so I modified it a little.

First, we made it a brown paper bag theme.  We bought brown wrapping paper from the Dollar Store and wrapped cardboard boxes and put "Brown paper packages, Tied up with string. FRIENDS are a few of my Favorite Things".  We set those on the front table. We covered the "treat" table with a cute brown and red checkered wrapping paper, and would have covered our other table, but ran out :(  

We had a popcorn bar for our treat.  I brought my popcorn maker, and we had quart sized plastic bags that the ladies put their popcorn in.  (not cute, but it was a good way for the butter not to leak through, and they were able to shake up the fun popcorn mix that they had made) We had mini m&ms, sugar babies, skittles and red hots as candy mix-ins and ranch, butter and white cheddar seasonings that they could sprinkle on the popcorn.  I meant to bring cinnamon and sugar, but I forgot.  Popcorn with butter and cinnamon and sugar sprinkled on it is YUMMMMMY!  To keep with the brown paper bag theme, I cut brown lunch sacks in half, and that is what we used to put the candies in.  Cheap and simple!  We also put nametags so that the ladies could easily see what there was to put on their popcorn. 

popcorn bar

 

upclose look at popcorn bar items

 

 At the end of the popcorn bar, we had water bottles with a Wyler's light or Crystal Light tied to them with this quote, downloaded from Pinterest.

As the women came in, I had them fill out a little card that had 3 questions.  What is your fav book or movie, what is your fav treat, and where is you fav place to eat at.  They put this in a popcorn bucket, and we used them later for a game.  After filling those out, they were able to head to the popcorn bar.

To start off the night, I shared some quotes about getting to know each other so that we can be more inspired to help the ladies in our ward.  And some quotes about opening ourselves up so that others can know us well enough to help us when we need it. That is where the water bottle quote comes into play.

After that, I had each woman share her favorite item that she had brought.  After 4 women had shared, I pulled 3 or 4 cards from the popcorn bucket and the ladies had to guess who had written what.  I had homemade zucchini bread for the person who guessed the 4 names correctly before anyone else. (I had made about 7 individual sized zucchini breads)

It was a very fun night, listening to the stories behind the favorite things that were shared, and seeing the connections made as ladies learned more about each other.

At the end of the evening, each woman went home with a party favor.  This is the biggest difference from the fav things parties I had seen on Pinterest.  Instead of the women bringing 5 or 10 of their fav thing to share with the others at the party, we just had them bring the one. And instead, they went home with a party favor (in a brown paper sack) that had some chocolate, some mints, a neat quote on friendship by CS Lewis, a list of fav couponing sites, 2 recipes, and a home made cookie from one of the recipes.  Easy and cheap -  nothing to scream about, but its always fun to go home with something.  The printable on the bag says "These are a few of my favorite things".

 

 

This was a fun night!  And I didn't mention that we invited the Young Women to this night.  It was a fun way to get to know them, and for them to get to know the Relief Society ladies (and realize that we do fun things, too!)