Movie Party Birthday Bash

Written By Amy Greene of Pounds4Pennies

Amy Greene of Pounds4Pennies lives in Texas with her husband and blended family of three kids, two who are 10 and a 2 year old. Amy has been a frugal shopper for years and enjoys throwing a party on a budget. She enjoys couponing, cooking and crafts.

This year my daughter turned 10. Yep she is double digits now. I can’t believe it. Where did the time go? I remember she was born a little over two weeks after 9/11. I was thinking of what kind of world was I bringing her into. Things have not changed as drastically as I thought they might.

MOVIE PARTY IDEAS

She picked her party theme “A Night at the Movies.” She wanted this to be a red carpet event. So I did my best to give her a fabulous Movie Party event on an extreme budget.

The Menu

We are talking eight 9-10 year old girls, so I wanted to keep the menu simple. My first thought is what do you get at the movies? Hotdogs are served at the movies. Then I thought nachos, my all-time favorite and hers too. I purchased some Velveeta cheese for this event, one of the most expensive things for the party. I had plenty of salsa from and I bought some chips. Then of course the most obvious thing at the movies is popcorn. I didn’t want to spend my time popping a million bags of popcorn in the microwave. I knew they could eat a ton from the last party she had. So I borrowed a hot air popper from a friend. I popped five batches of popcorn. Yes that is a lot of popcorn. They serve candy at the movies, so I got all sorts of candy and chocolate chips to mix in the popcorn.

Menu:

• Hot Dogs & Buns
• Nachos
• Popcorn
• Candy
• Chocolate Chips
• Popcorn Cake

By the way the plain chocolate chips were a big hit. Who knew? Hint hint if you are throwing a party soon, chocolate chips are cheaper than candy.

And of course, since it is a birthday party you will need a cake. I didn’t feel like buying one from the store. So I decided to make one instead. It is a Popcorn cake. Click the link to see how to make this fabulous cake… super cute. I even made a Popcorn Cake of these for a friend who had a Movie Party.

She enjoyed putting the “popcorn” on the cake.

Decorations

I purchased a generic silver star set from the party store last year. I choose this since it would go with a lot of party themes and not be a one-time purchase. We just recycled these and hung them around the house. I found a cheap red carpet at the party store we place outside our door. I colored large yellow stars with sidewalk chalk in front of the house to make it look like the Hollywood walk of Fame. (If I had a little more time I was going to write the girls name who were attending the party in the stars).

I made her a banner for her birthday. Her name is at the end, I do not want to share it to protect her identity. She loved it.

I found the popcorn buckets at Target for $1.00 each. And the paper ones at hobby lobby for 8 for $2.49. I couldn’t find my coupon or it would have been cheaper. They made their popcorn buckets and filled them with candy and popcorn and everything. I didn’t care what they ate as long as they had a great time.

For the table I used a red table cloth. I covered my cake dish with black tissue paper for the stand where the popcorn gift bags were. I also covered a bowl with black tissue paper to place the Popcorn cake on. I thought it looked fabulous for a movie party idea.

Entertainment

My husband borrowed the projector from his work and we hooked it up outside and put a large white sheet on the back of the house. He used a staple gun to tack it up. It looked great. I spread several blankets outside on the lawn where they could lay down eat popcorn and watch the movie. (not too much movie watching happened) They even had a popcorn fight and I didn’t care since all of this was outside. I just picked up the blankets shook them off and I was done with clean up… super easy.

Everyone had a great time! This was fun for me too, since most of the party took place outside I didn’t have a lot to clean up inside.