Something that I truly wasn’t ready for when becoming a parent was birthday parties. Just the sheer amount of them, the amount of time they would take up, how much they would cost, the behaviors they would bring out in my children, and the amount of time it would take to plan them. It’s a lot. When we had our first baby I planned her first birthday and invited everyone we knew, and I was shocked at the whole production. I knew that I needed to set myself up for success and reevaluate how I wanted my family to view birthdays. In came the Fiver Party. Here is how you can throw a fiver party.
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What is a Fiver Party?
A Fiver party, by my definition, is a party where you ask all your guests to bring $5 instead of a gift, and this money goes towards one big gift that is crowd funded. We started doing this when my oldest turned 1 and we bought her a Zoo Membership for us to enjoy. It went so well that we decided to do it again when she turned two and she got a super fun wooden playhouse that she still loves. We have continued this tradition with all of our birthdays and all of our kids. It has been such a great tradition, and we get a really great toy that our kids love!
When we invite people to a Fiver party we make sure to include all the needed information in the invitation. We make sure to explain that she will have gifts, and what the money will go towards. I find that providing information helps people understand what we are doing!
I also offer up the idea of putting the money in a BOOK or card so that they can grab a cheap book to wrap if they feel weird about not having a gift.
My kids really love this party style. Their grandparents contribute to the gift, but they rarely can control themselves and not get them a gift or two to unwrap, so for them it really is the best of both worlds.
We also frequently give them big gift items, that they get to unwrap, so it is super fun that way too! For example, this year my oldest is getting a really nice bike! So she will get to unwrap that this year!
Gift Ideas
We have done 8 birthdays this way! So I have several really great ideas for you! When they were really little I loved doing a zoo membership or a membership to a fun local play space. That was really fun, and they were little enough that they didn’t notice they didn’t get to unwrap anything. But as the girls have gotten older more and more items have popped up that they would really enjoy! Here is what we have done so far!
Oldest:
First Birthday: Zoo Membership
Second Birthday: Wooden Playhouse for the backyard
Third Birthday: Kiwi Co Subscription
Fourth Birthday: Beach Trip Money
Fifth Birthday: Local Art Classes
Sixth Birthday: New Bike
Middle Child:
First Birthday: Zoo Membership
Second Birthday: Multiple Local Play Space Memberships
Third Birthday: Atlanta Braves Trip Spending Money
Fourth Birthday: Climbing Dome
Some other ideas that I have had for my kiddos, and some that we plan to do in the future!
- Bikes are always a great idea! These are my favorites for multiple ages! We love this one for newly mobile, this one is the next stage up, and then we got this one for my oldest!
- Memberships to a zoo, aquarium, museum, or play space
- Outdoor toys!
- Playhouse
- Climbing Structures
- Trampolines
- Powerwheels
- New tablet
- Subscriptions
- Registration for classes/sports!
- Nugget Couch
- Vacation spending money
- Plane Tickets
- Sporting tickets
- Concert Tickets
- New furniture or a room update
- A TV
- Gaming Console
- Yoto Player
- Experiences
Why do you do this?
We have a few reasons behind why we do this. My daughters all have birthday’s around major holidays. My oldest is about 2 weeks after Christmas, my middle is right around Easter, and my youngest is right around father’s day. This is hard for us because we already get them gifts around their birthdays, and they get so inundated with gifts that getting more stuff for their birthdays just seems like a bad idea.
Another reason is because 3 kids is expensive. We would love for them to have these things but we can’t always swing a $300-$500 gift for a birthday, three times a year. So instead we crowd fund it and have everyone chip in on a gift so the cost is less all the way around. This makes it possible for our kids to get really good gifts, but we aren’t footing the bill for all of it.
I’ll be the first to say that I love buying toys. I really really love a good toy, but I also really don’t like junk, and I am very specific about the toys I want in my home, for my own sanity and for my kids. So if I direct people towards one big gift it doesn’t bring in extra clutter. It creates less waste of resources, because I’m really good at getting my kids gifts, so I know they will love what we picked out and it will get a lot of use.
Does it work?
If you don’t include the grandparents, 90% of the time yes! We have very few friends that disregard what we ask for. Most of the time it’s just people who have never been to a party for our kids, and they didn’t read all of the invitation. When this happens we say thank you, let the kids open the gifts, and move on. It’s not a big deal and my children love it. So its a win win! But honestly parents are usually happy that I made it super simple for them and cheap.
But something else that we do as a family, is we don’t have a birthday party every year. We have a birthday party for the “big birthdays”. For us that is 1, 5, 10, 13, 16, 18 and their golden birthday. On those birthdays we will have a big party, invite all our friends and have a really great time. But on all the other birthdays its a simple play date, or a fun day out and about, or a family dinner with our loved ones. It’s not a party or a big to do every year. So when we do have a party people come and they love on our girls because we don’t have a party every year.
I also think one of the reasons this works so well is because I work really hard to find an attainable gift. I am not looking at getting something that is thousands of dollars. I look for something that my family could cover. We have 5 families that contribute to this gift every single year (3 grandparents, 2 aunts) and I try to stick around $60 per family. Some people give more, some give less, but it always ends up being enough and I will cover anything left over. If we get more than we need, I look for an additional large gift or a membership, or we use that money to eat out (because my kids love restaurants).
All in all I love having Fiver Parties. It makes our life so much easier, and we get some really nice gifts that we most likely wouldn’t be able to give our kids on our own. It cuts down on the clutter that comes into our house and we just love the way this makes their birthday super fun every year. If our kids ever decided they didn’t want to do this then we would 100% change it up, but for now they like it as much as we do.
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