Easy and inexpensive sleepover

This weekend my just-turned nine year old had a sleepover party. We survived. No one got hurt. Nothing got damaged. The budget wasn't broken. Everyone had a great time. My middle son helped out a lot, the oldest one a little after coming back from watching his High School football game. Although it was rainy outside, and we were restricted to staying indoors, there was no rough-housing and it worked out really well.

So what did we do?

Used evites for the invitations. Since we were not inviting the entire class, we couldn't distribute invitations in class anyway. $0

The kids were asked to bring a sleeping bag, a pillow, and labelled hand-held electronic games. We invited seven, but only four could come.

We had pizza for dinner (where I live, when you show your PTA membership card at Papa John's, there's a buy one 14", get one deal, no matter how many pies you order). So I picked up the pizza on my way home from work, and kept warm in the oven. We ordered six, two too many, but this way the family has leftovers. The kids each had two or three slices; so did I. :-) $41-ish, but had I ordered only four (which was all I really needed to feed them and my family), it would've been $27-ish.

Gave the kids water bottles; made customized labels, with their names on it. $3 for the water?

Kids came at 6:30pm. After dinner, we had cake (I made it from a box, I admit). With frosting, let's say $2.50.

Then the kids watched a movie, Alvin and the Chipmunks. (We rented two DVDs from Blockbuster, so that's what, about $8?).

I made a few bags of store-brand microwave popcorn. Let's say another $2 or $3

Then we opened presents and then made T-shirts. I bought a package of "6-for-the-price-of-5" undershirts and printed out a bunch of coloring pages so the kids would have outlines of things they would like. Sometimes it's hard to come up with (and execute) ideas on your own. I cut up a box so that we could tape the chosen coloring page to the cardboard, and insert inside of the undershirt. This way, the boys could see the outline, they'd have a hard surface to write on and the markers wouldn't go through the shirt. We used Sharpies we had in the house. About $6.50 for the shirts.

Then we ate fun ice cream pops (based on candy bars). Maybe $2.50 (yes, I use coupons and sales whenever I can.)

Then the kids played Wii, their hand-helds and old-fashioned Twister. Then I had the kids brush teeth and get into pjs and get into their sleeping bags for a "midnight showing" of Ratatouille. All the guests were asleep by the end of the movie.

The next morning, I made chocolate chip muffins ($2 ish?) and they put away their stuff and played Wii and hand-helds some more until their 10:30am pickup.

Throw in another $4-5 for chocolate milk and soda.

The kids' time was structured for the most part and they loved the t-shirt (except for those who had to dress differently for where they were going next, they all wore their new t-shirts).

The fact that there were not a large number of boys, the time was structured, and my older sons helped out made it all a good experience.

The whole thing came to about $60 (using the lower figure for the pizza). One boy told me it was the best party he'd ever been to. My own son said it was much better than his last two parties. Both of those were with his class and other friends in a public park (free), with an arts and crafts activity (under $20 for everything, thanks to what's in the house and/or dollar store), cupcakes ($3 ish, made from mix), other nosh and drinks (another $10-15?), playground and outdoor toys we brought.