It's my husband's 30th birthday tomorrow and although lockdown restrictions aren't as bad as they used to be we couldn't celebrate the way we really wanted to. He wanted to have a BBQ in the garden which we've done for his birthday a couple of times before, but unfortunately this time we had to have a much smaller guest list. Gone were the usual party games and the girls being first to head into the living room.

Instead of having lots of people I decided to have lots of party decorations, but on a budget. We had two gazebos in the garden, one with a TV to show the football(!), buckets with ice dotted around the garden and then a long table set up in the garage for the food. Because the decorations weren't just for the BBQ I made sure to put them in both the house and the garden.

The biggest decoration I had was the black, gold, white and confetti balloon arch. I know more and more small businesses are selling balloon displays but that's definitely not cheap. I knew I'd have time as I'm still at home on maternity leave so I decided to create the balloon arch myself. I bought the supplies from Ali Express. The bundle included 112 balloons with a 6 foot balloon strip for assembly and it cost £8.89. That's about the third of a price of some of the other DIY balloon arches that I've seen and it's massive. I bought it in June so that it would definitely arrive on time and it did exactly that. I maybe should have bought a balloon pump but I survived blowing them all up by myself. The hardest part was keeping them hidden! 

As though over 100 balloons wasn't enough I had to make sure there was some with 30 on it. I bought a pack of 30th birthday balloons from Wish for £2.85. There was a mixture of confetti balloons and gold balloons tying in the gold theme I seemed to have started. 

The last bundle of balloons I bought were the big gold Happy birthday and 30 banner balloons. These are really effective balloons as they look a bit like the helium ones but just blow up with a little straw. They come with some ribbon too so once they're all threaded on you've just got to choose where to put them. It was only £4 for all of them so a lot cheaper than some of the others on the high street.

I'd thought about getting a big, fancy cake made but when I was dropping hints my husband said he didn't really like cake and would much rather a cheesecake. It's little surprise really considering our wedding cake was a cheesecake! My Mum makes a mean cheesecake so with her on board his birthday cake was sorted.  I bought a Personalised cake topper from eBay and it was only £2.99. This was such a good way of turning a basic looking cake into something a little more exciting. It's good that you can choose any colour and glitter to match in with your theme.

My last decorations weren't just for this birthday gathering but a couple of decorations that are handy to have and ones we've used loads before. We got a rose gold letter board in 2018 to use at our wedding on the Pimp Your Prosecco table. It doesn't take long to put together your personalised message for whatever the occasion and you can get them so cheap now. There's also quite a few different colours and sizes to choose from. 

We had a table in the garage for the food which was actually a pasting table for decorating so it needed something on top. I had a few sequin tablecloths from the wedding which weren't that cheap, about £40, but are useful to have and much nicer than a plain plastic one.