Mr. Wonderful and I have been married 33 years. We have always struggled with our finances. Throughout the years we have had to become very creative to compensate for our lack of funds.


The family celebration consisted of your favorite foods, cake and ice cream and much better presents than the party year. During the party years, the rules were as follows: No more guests than the child's age. The party had to be on a Saturday afternoon. All family members had to participate in setting up, participating and clean up without complaining.

One of my favorite theme parties was Baby Girl's Clue Party. Baby Girl was a tween and loved to play "Clue". She always had to be Miss Scarlet. So the invitations went out to her friends that they needed to dress as one of the characters in the clue game.

We had the party at our church so there were plenty of rooms. As the guests arrived they were taken into the party room where they were allowed to model their costumes and prizes were awarded for the best costume. Suddenly there was a scream in the hallway and the little girls went rushing out to hall where they discovered Boy Wonder (Mr. Body) lying dead (in between giggles ) with a chalk outline around his body and the clue mystery began.

The girls were taken into different rooms where they interview various characters. I was Mrs. White in the kitchen with the knife. We had made up a story about where we were at the time of the murder and had one weapon in each of the rooms. Each of the girls had at least one clue card and were encouraged to ask questions and were given one clue by each character.

Mr. Wonderful was Professor Plum, Grrrl was Ms Peacock and we had asked some of our adult friends to play other roles. The winner was the girl who was first to come up with the solution.

It was a fun party and took very little money but lots of imagination!

Labels: Birthday, Monday memories, Suzy