Giveaway Winners….

Well I am super late announcing two winners:

1. The P&G Gift Basket of products goes to melanie:  “I like the Pro-X products.”

2.  AND the $100 gift card provided by Apartment Guide goes to Deanna: “I’d like to have a dinner party.”

Ladies you should have already received emails from me!

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And I did say I would let you know how our little Mexican Fiesta Party party went and I have to say it was really fun!

Here are a few budget tips that worked for me:

Real Simple

We served pink lemonade- Newman’s Own which was .99 a carton after coupon and margaritas.  I also had soft drinks and water that were free with ECBs at CVS.

We did make your own tacos and quesadillas.  I wasn’t sure if these would hold up well but it actually turned out great.  I did flour and corn tortillas and we had a big batch of grilled chicken and shredded beef.  Then we put out a bunch of toppings- like shredded cheese, lettuce, salsa, guacamole, rice, sour cream etc..  All of those items are very inexpensive- the shredded cheese I recently got for .45 a bag and the guacamole was about .85 after coupon.  The quesadillas were cheese or with beef and they were made in advance and then I kept them warm in the oven.

The other thing that actually worked out really well is a pinata.  I bought a pinata for $15 at Walmart to use as the centerpiece for the beverage table.  It turns out that my 3 year old knew what a pinata was so at the last minute I filled it up with candy (leftover candy from Halloween and Christmas!) and we hung it up and the girls went at it.

It turned out to be a lot of fun and kept the kids excited and entertained.   (Yes that is Adriana in her Fancy Nancy party outfit.)  I would obviously not recommend doing this inside for older kids- but our little girls really enjoyed it.

So overall we actually had a great time and I was really surprised at how inexpensive it was.  One other little thing that I did was buy aluminum pie tins at the Dollar store.  They were 3 for $1 and I bought several packs for people to use to take leftovers home.  That was so much easier than trying to wrap a million plates.