I had to vote for handmade gifts, carrot cake and singing "simple gifts". Not because we do that...just because the image made me giggle really hard. I'm envisioning beatific expressions on our faces as we hold hands and sing "Tis a gift to be simple, tis a gift to be free...". snicker....

I agree. I've just finished one party and I'm already having to think about another. We don't go all out by any means. We don't even go a little way out. But I even resent the fact that there are any expectations at all! My daughter wants a rainbow pony cake. That's bad enough.

I escaped the goodie bags for my son's birthday...we did a group trip to the baby orchestra and I gave them all little whistles and castanets in the park afterward and they had a marching band. My daughter, however is in school...and I'm worried that there's a certain amount of "street cred" that goes with the party and the goodie bag in school... I don't want to make her the uncool kid...but neither do I want fifteen screaming children, a whole lot of sugar, and required goodie bags.

and to think that if i had 5000 bucks, what a better place my son and i could be in. burns me up to think that this is being spent on a party. invest! pay for college WAY ahead of time! argh, i guess if someone can afford to do that they have no worries on the college tip.

this year, isaac's fifth birthday, we did our first Chuck E Cheese event. he would have totally been happy with the park, but we wanted to treat him. even so, we did not pay Chuck E Cheese the $200 bucks or whatever. we brought our own cake, paid for pizza for everyone, and got out of there for half of that.

next year, we will revert back to the backyard party or something similar.

We had a big party for my son's fourth birthday.  It was at a nice restaurant because our house size couldn't handle the people, and all of our family lived at least an hour away and I thought if they drove that far, they deserved a hot meal.

So after I picked a restaurant, I'm like, what are all of these kids going to do in a restaurant in the middle of winter?  So I hired an awesome kids singer, Mr. Ray.  He's not cheap and nor should he be, he is an artist and is worth every cent.

The party ended up costing quite a bit, but it was so worth it.  Everyone had a great time, I think we had at least 60 people there.  I think it was more fun than our wedding.  Maybe we should have hired Mr. Ray to sing at our wedding.  : )

Anyway, it seemed really extravagant at the time, and my son liked it, but he would have just been as happy with a cake at home.  I admit, it was more for us.  

Now, the next year, we had a cake at home on his actual birthday with a few gifts.  

Looking back, I'm so glad I had it, because my MIL started having pain right after that, literally the next week, and got diagnosed with pancreatic cancer four months later and died another miserable four months later.  It was the last big party that she was able to go to, where everyone was there and we have tons of pictures and videos from the event.  Not that we needed to have it at a restaurant to make it meaningful, that was more a function of how small our house was and NJ weather in December, but it's interesting how life works out sometimes.

On a side note on the goodie bags, funny enough, after all of that, I decided to cheap out on goodie bags.  I didn't give any, I figured the music was gift enough.  Well, this little girl, about six years old, comes up to me at the end and politely asks "Where are the goodie bags?," and I say, the gift is the party and the music and the dancing and the memories of being with all your cousins," and she very calmly says to me, "There is usually a goodie bag at birthday parties."  So cute.

I also like the trend of celebrating adult birthdays more now too, like having a some kind of a party for your 40th and getting a DJ and having a blast.  We should be partying for ourselves once in a while too  : )

but limit it to one guest per year of age (which will bite me on the ass when he gets to be 10) and we have always done it here at the house.  Lot's of playing (inside or outside), one activity (which DH- the 2nd grade teacher- coordinates), cake/ gifts and call it done.  We have a "pick up time" on the invitation which is exactly two hours from the start time.  Goody bags always have the same stuff- one pencil, a few pieces of candy that fit the theme, and a ball.  This  year we might do a pinata for DD rather than goody bags, but DS and his friends would give someone a bloody nose if we tried it.  In fact, I think we'll probably do mini-golf for his, just because they have a room (meaning I don't have to clean my house before or after) and the activity is all arranged for us- and they help supervise.  All for $5 per kid- we provide the cake.

Feels like a bargain to me...

$5,000 dollars is wrong, although I've heard of celebrities spending up to $50,000, and I think...families live off that or much, much less!  How do you justify this?  This from the same people who would tell you they don't spoil their kids!

Not that I think expensive and useless things are purchased for kids.  Parents do these things for themselves.  

I wouldn't feel guilty about the pony.  $100 dollars is a lot but isn't insane, and I think it's money better spent then, say $20 spent on gift bags.  Gift bags will either rot teeth (candy) or end up in a landfill (cheap toys), but I really feel that, depending on the kid, a pony can be life enriching.  Provided something of that magnitude is rare, your daughter may be telling her grandchildren about it.

I am continually amazed at what people find to spend money on.....

We have mostly done parties at home. This year DS invited two friends and we went bowling. DD invited three friends and we watched "Hairspray" and had pizza and cake. We did goodie bags mainly because there were so few kids.

Last year [10 year old B day] we had a bigger party. DS did a Survivor themed party with games that I made up [scrabble tiles hidden in a bucket of sand, each person races out and finds a tile, then races back, when they find all the tiles, they unscramble the phrase] and then we served the type of food you get for reward on survivor -- white castle burgers [buy in the freezer section], peanut butter and ice cream. DD had a disco party. The girls dressed up, we pushed back our living room furniture, got out our little revolving tabletop colored light, and played disco music. We had a pizza, chicken nugget and fruit buffet reminiscent of Happy hour at the disco from  my college days.

We have a friend who insists that age 10 is the last party -- after that you can invite a couple of friends to spend the night or go out to do something like rock climbing. I think I'm adopting this rule.

when my kids were little.  They could only have one every other year.  It's actually easier now that they're bigger - invite the best buds for pizza, movie, sleepover.  I like my kids' friends, so 3-4 teens or preteens that want to watch Harry Potter and giggle is much less stressful to me than trying to entertain 10 preschoolers or early elementary kids.

or at the nearby park - small gift bags, perhaps a pinata and a store-bought cake, but that's about it.  I have kind of a thing about over the top birthday parties.  It just seems so unnecessary.

This year (#8 for my son) I am considering doing it somewhere else just to make life simpler, but we'll see.

I read about this as well - the cake being a mock-Coach bag and all. I think I read about it on Jezebel...

We actually haven't done a friends birthday party for Jess; when she turned one, we had only been in the country for four months and didn't know any children. We invited all the IL, and due to massive family ish, half of us were drunk for medicinal purposes, the other half were out smoking (tobacco) in our backyard. Fun and games! Second birthday we spent half in the US, half in Australia. Contining IL ish meant that we actually had two occasions for Jess, just so that everybody would get to see Jess with her cake. Fun and games!

This year? Finally have enough little friends for Jess to have a party. June is, of course, winter here, but if the weather's behaving, I'm planning on having a simple party at a park. It's pretty common to do that and I'm sticking with that!

If I had 5K I could pay for half the fees to help a family adopt a special needs child from a third world country.  I could pay for 10 life saving heart surgies for orphans in Shanghai.  I could send 20 kids to college in Tibet.  I could feed 100 babies f for a month in Gansu.

So I anticipate a lot of parties that consist of let the boys out in the backyard to run themselves crazy, load them up on tasty treats, and that's the end of it.  I guess I could eat these words someday, but I just cannot see myself springing for even $10 gift bags for 5-10 kids.  I can't see how it's necessary.

When I was in sixth grade, the aboslutely to-die-for thing to do was to have a birthday party at the roller skating rink in the "big town" 70 miles away.  My parents said I could do that, but I could only invite three girls because my brothers had to go as well, so that's all they were paying for.  So I picked my three closest friends, and the others understood because their parents would've said the same thing, and we had a great time, that we still remember; one of the girls just commented on it the other day, 25 years later.  I hope I'm not one of the only people who still thinks you can have memorable events without spending a ton of money.

It cost $175.  $90 to rent a room at the rec center, and then the rest on food, and Dora stuff.  I'm actually appalled it ended up being that much.  $10k???  Who are these horrendous people?  I'm honestly disgusted.

We had 10 other kids, and all in all it was good.  Needed to work on our timing a bit better, but I don't think it was a huge problem.  POURING down rain, everyone got soaked on their way into the building.  Ha!

In my neck of the woods, if you invite the kid from class then that includes his/her siblings and parents. I have only had one child "dropped off" at our party. Granted my child is only 5, so maybe that will change as they get older.

This does raise the cost of the party, just in terms of food/drink costs.

Also, we recent transplants to the Keys that we are, have noticed that a lot of "kids" parties offer alcoholic beverages for the grown-ups. Do you'all do that? I imagine that is quite a bit more expensive.

I'm still recovering from Grant's 8th birthday  party from this afternoon.  We try to keep it simple, but somehow they always seem to grow in size (the number of attendees).  

I'm a big believer in not going too crazy for kid's birthday parties.  I know folks that spring for a place called Pump it Up that runs at around $300 (Not even close to 10K, but still a lot) for parties.  That seems like a bit much for us and our budget.  My motto has always been... how do you top next year?  Will the kids always be expecting more and more?  We do at home parties with hamburgers and hotdogs on the grill, homemade cake, games and something small for the kids to take home.  Not more than that.  

and I have gone "all out" both years now- I try to spread purchasing out for a few months to alleviate the price tag, but it's around $400, I think, when all is said and done. We have a lot of family, and this year we did the kid party too. The difference is, I LOVE that stuff. I get high off of thinking of the theme, activities, goodies, decorations, making things, etc.

For her first birthday we did Little Mermaid. I decorated the downstairs as "under the sea" with fish from the ceiling and shiny blue streamer-like things as the water, and the kids had fish door hangers to make. we had it all. I loved it. and I posted about my wiggles party before, and that was a blast. I don't get stressed about the parties. Sometimes I don't plan as well and have to rush when people are coming in, which sucks, but I have family and friends that help a TON (BFF was a life saver with her organization last time) and I am not the person who feels the need to obsessively clean when I'm AT the party- dishes stay in the sink, who cares? My mother gets anal and usually starts to clean up, but if I plan all this stuff? I am going to HAVE FUN WITH MY KID.

I guess I'd say- if you don't find it fun? Your kid will sense the stress and probably won't be as relaxed as you'd like. Plus, if your kid isn't a social butterfly, why would you put them through the stress of a big party?

I can't understand the $5000 price tag, though... what kind of pressure to HAVE FUN would that be? YOU MUST LOVE THIS PARTY, KID, IT COST A FORTUNE!