Creative ways to give money to kids for their birthdays.

My kids and their friends are at the age now where receiving cash for birthdays is a big deal.  And this works out great for me since I have a hard enough time knowing what to get my own kids much less what to get their friends.

In February, when Peter's friend Colton turned 7,we gave him money but I wanted to make it a little more exciting than just opening an envelope with cash in it - I wanted him to have something to unwrap.

So I got a whole bunch of balloons and filled each one up with a dollar or some change, until I had a large box full of balloons with money.  And then I wrapped up the box. 

Colton was pretty excited to see such a big gift box and according to the report I got the morning after the birthday sleepover, he had a good time popping the balloons to get the cash out. 

The kids went to sleepover at Cheyanne's on Friday to celebrate her 5th birthday and I knew I wanted to give her cash as well.  I didn't want to do the balloons in a box again since we had just done that with her brother.

I remembered a bunch of plastic Easter Eggs laying around and thought money would be cute stuffed in those.  

I went to Target to try to find some sort of stuffed animal shaped like a chicken.  And to my excitement they had a small Webkinz chicken!  Cheyanne loves Webkinz so this would be perfect.  (Now don't look to closely because even though the Webkinz tag calls it a chicken, I think technically it's a rooster because it has one of those red things on it's head.)

I got a cheap basket, put dark brown shredded paper in the bottom of it (attempting to simulate straw), laid the eggss (get it?  laid the eggs!) on top of the "straw" and placed the chicken on top of the eggs. 

How adorable is this?  So much cuter than money in an envelope!