My whole philosophy about throwing a great party is that you only need a few unexpected details to make it special. Well, for this party, which is today, I’m living my own advice.

So what are my unexpected details?

Well, first my gorgeous mermaid printables from Love the Day. This is the first time I’m using party printables and so far I’m loving the whole experience.  If I want more decorations, I just press “print.” How cool is that?

My second detail is my cupcake toppers from Two Sugar Babies. I’ve never seen or tasted fondant cupcake toppers before and I bet most of my guests haven’t either, so I can’t wait to see their reaction. Plus Charynn designed a special 3-D mermaid topper for my daughter’s cupcake. I promise you, she’s going to go nuts!

My third detail is my photo booth with props.  Kelli from The Paper Dolls Shoppe designed these adorable photo booth printable lips and mustaches that we’re giving away for FREE. Again, I bet most of my guests have never seen this before, so I’m curious to see how it goes over. Four-year-olds can be pretty unpredictable, therefore this might be an exercise in letting go. 🙂

And finally, the party favors, which are a very important detail to my daughter.  She wanted to give her friends something special, and I didn’t want to give them sweets because of the possible wrath of the other mothers. 🙂  So I found these cute mermaid and pirate Shrinky Dinks for half off…

…and wrapped them up pretty with what else… my printables!! What do you think?

My last detail is my two balloon bouquets from  Balloon Celebrations. Cyndy is definitely helping me out here. I don’t think I could afford them otherwise, so a big thank you to you, Cyndy!

There you have it. Budgets are hard, but most of us have to deal with them. And at the end of the day, I really only have to please one person – my daughter. (Okay two people, my husband when the Visa bill comes.)

If you have similar stories, or tips on how you saved money throwing a party, or  special details you added to make your party memorable, I’d love to hear them.

And as I’ve said before, wish me luck today… and of course I’ll be sharing how it all went down.