The Best Birthday Party Tips & Tricks

Hosting a sleepover? A movie night? An outdoor bonfire? Inflatable pools set up with blankets and pillows make for a pretty display and are also super cozy and fun for kids to relax on inside.

No one works as fast as a mom with an ice cream scoop at a party when everything’s melting. Before the party starts, take a minute to pop scoops of ice cream into muffin tins and then stick them in the freezer. They’ll be perfect single-serve scoops ready to go next to cake on plates.

You need an activity for the early birds (maybe even your own agitated kid). May we suggest some good old-fashioned coloring? “We used to cover our coffee table with white paper — the kind from a roll — and put out markers and invite arriving kids to come and color while waiting for everyone else. We’d put out LEGOs and stuff, too, for kids who didn’t want to draw. It also gave kids something to do if they didn’t want to participate in later activities,” Catherine Newman, writer and author of How To Be a Person, tells Romper.

Know some families with teenagers? Hire them for the party. Whether you want a face-painting station, a hair-styling station, or just need some extra hands for crafty activities, a teenager or two can really help facilitate and wrangle little kids.

“A lot of the times I see parents take on parties without any kind of help,” says Lisa Lafferty, Los-Angeles-based founder and CEO of Lisa Lafferty Events. “Having a helper can make a world of difference: you can actually enjoy the party.”

Jung Lee, New York-based founder of Fête and Jung Lee New York, agrees: “It can be hard, especially when you have a child you have to attend to.” She suggests tag-teaming with your partner if possible so that one of you is always with your little one and the other one is circulating among guests.

Cut up cheap plastic tablecloths from the Dollar Store to make an absolutely epic fringe backdrop for the party. This will look gorgeous as part of the decor, but it will also make for the best photo backdrop. It does take a little bit of time to pull together, but if you want a showstopper, this is the way.

This tip works great for photo ops, but it’s honestly just going to be so fun for little party guests to crawl through. Cut a hula hoop in half, then gather lots of tape and some fun accessories to create the ultimate tunnel/cave as a major decoration item for the party.

If your child really wants to get into decorating their own cake, buy a cake from the grocery store and scrape off any frosting decor they don’t want, like flowers or balloons. And then give them tons of candy, sprinkles, macarons, mini cookies — whatever they want to decorate their own cake — and top it off.

Ice cream cake can be an absolute mess to cut up, but they are so delicious. Try this TikTok hack and turn slices of cake into individual ice cream cake servings for all of your child’s guests. Less mess, easy to pass out, and so good.

A pack of Mario stickers and plain red cups can make you some very festive (and cheap!) birthday party decor. Just use themed stickers on cups, hats, and favor bags for a matching look.

There are some gorgeous backdrops out there for parties, but honestly, they can be incredibly time-consuming. This party tip is genius: Put up some twine and use a pencil to help unroll crepe paper without it getting all tangled or rolling away. Cut every piece the same length and you’ve got a gorgeous backdrop.

Those pesky little glue dots that come with balloon garland tape can be incredibly frustrating as your smaller balloons pop off and waft down to the ground. Instead, try using a rubber band around a bunch of smaller balloons and secure them to a larger balloon in the garland that way.

I mean, genius. No notes. Use your favorite cookie cutters — like a number-shaped one for your child’s age — and cut up fruit for a super easy and festive snack.

Ball pits are all the rage at birthday parties, but they are also supremely impractical. Balls fly right out of the top of those pits, and they really aren’t a great size for more than a couple of kids at one time. Instead, invest in a bigger inflatable pool, fill it with enough balls to cover the bottom, and watch kids have an absolute blast without balls spilling over every time someone gets in it.

This inflatable pool is perfect for toddlers and is just $20.

This is a large inflatable pool with walls almost 2 feet high, so it’s a great choice for slightly older kids. (It’s $32.99.)

And if you wanna get really wild with the balls, this $40 inflatable pool allows for lots of movement and has basketball hoops to use for play with the balls.

Sending thank-you cards is a must, and Romper Editor-in-Chief Elizabeth Angell has a great hack for making sure your kids might even be excited about sitting down to write them. “I always give my kids a fresh pack of thank-you cards as a birthday present,” says Angell. “They always have something cute on hand to write.”

Want to make your ice cream scoops extra special? Pre-scoop them into cups with lids, add sprinkles, and freeze before the party. Voila!

No matter where you buy your foil balloons or balloons you want as decor, save them and head to your local Dollar Tree for helium. It’s only $1 and if you do a search in any mom group or ask your friends, they’ll all say the same thing: Dollar Tree has some magical helium. It seems to last forever.

There are few things worse than trying to sweatily pull everything together for your child’s birthday party: The tape gets stuck, the crepe paper tears, the balloons pop — it’s the worst. But this hack makes it easy to make your crepe paper garland the night before. Cut one strip, use it to measure the rest of the strips, and then go ahead and tape them at the top as you lay them out on the floor. Then you can just pick it up and hang.

Andi Teggart of the lifestyle blog Lucky Andi tells Romper her birthday party hack is simple: go to Whole Foods. “I’ve ordered a cake from Whole Foods for every party, and they are always delicious, beautifully decorated, and reasonably priced. I feel like it’s a hidden secret that they make gorgeous custom cakes at an affordable price point! They will do custom cakes for you, too. Here’s a WF simple cake with berries at my daughter’s 5th Safari Birthday Party, gorgeous rainbow and ombre cakes for my daughter’s 1st ‘Rainbow Party,’ and ombre blueberry cake for my daughter’s 1st birthday.”

You can hire a professional (pricey but wonderful) or just identify a friend or fellow parent with the best Instagram feed and ask them to be the designated photographer. Tell them to really go for it and take tons of pictures. Before they leave, have them airdrop them or upload them to Google Photos or something similar.

Not only are the photos wonderful to share with guests (either via an Instagram hashtag or for personal follow-up texts), but as the years go by and your child gets older, you’re going to love having these images to look back on.

Lee even suggests creating a scrapbook with a page or two for every birthday. “It’s such a great thing to have as a family and for your child to look back on and remember, ‘Oh my God, that was my 4th birthday! That was my 5th birthday!’” she says. “There are surely stressful moments in parenting and in parties, but these milestones bond us together.”