Canberra kids birthday parties - $130 v $900

A modern kids party in Canberra includes an event "on location", gifts purchased on eBay, guest appearances from your favourite Disney characters and event-branded water bottles.

With sons born in May, Canberra Times journalists Megan Doherty and Bree Winchester decided to road test the two types of parties you can have in Canberra - the "old school" versus the "ultra expensive".

Here's what they learnt. Click or touch here to jump to Bree on Riley's party.

Before you condemn me as the scabbiest mother in the world, hear me out: my son is three-years-old. He doesn't know any better. One of his favourite playthings is a cake of soap. Because it smells nice!

And you must also know this: I am learning from my mistakes. For his older sister, I set the bar of expectation too high, too fast. So much so that the tooth fairy not only delivers cash but clothes and shoes. I know. Ri-donc-u-lous. My son will be getting a $1 coin in a glass of water. And he'll love it.

So, for his third birthday, I wanted to start off low.

The presents. My son is obsessed with chainsaws, whipper-snippers, lawnmowers. A Jim's Mowing franchise is in his future for sure. So a friend has a contact who managed to get me a toy leaf blower for cheap. It was $25. He loved that leaf blower so much he slept with it in bed that night.

I got him a scooter for free off Gumtree. He also got a Spiderman electric toothbrush. I got it with a Big W gift card I'd received from my birthday a couple of months earlier.

He had three little friends over one Sunday morning to our house (a fourth was sick) and my daughter also had a friend over. Didn't go overboard with the food and it was pretty much all eaten. Home-made sausage rolls, watermelon, fairy bread, Freddo frogs in jelly, chips, water poppers.

We went old-school with the decorations. Balloons hanging from the pergola rafters with fishing line (I actually love the magical little canopy they create. Although, we did get some strange animal-shaped balloons that looked more like the boobs on the Skywhale.) We also made some crepe-paper streamers. Very therapeutic. My mum is a super op-shopper so she got me a bag of birthday boy paper plates, cups and serviettes for literally $1 from Vinnies.

Party games. My advice: don't worry about them for three-year-olds. When my daughter turned three, I hired two clown-fairies to do face-painting, magic and games. Those kids loved the face-painting but pretty much ignored everything else, as they tried to break the world record for the most number of three-year-olds on a trampoline at the same time.

For my son's birthday, I still persisted. Searched high and low for a pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. Could only find an inflatable one in Kmart (he had a velcro butt to which you apply velcro tails) for $10. One child was happy to play, the others just wanted to wrestle the poor donkey or ride him. And none were really into pass-the-parcel either.

I made the cake from a $4 chocolate cake mix (good eggs make the difference - any from Southside Farmers Markets!) I cut it in half and added fresh cream and $4 Aldi raspberries. It was topped with edible icing from Latorta at Majura Park. Emailed in an image of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. Just peel it off and put it on the cake. Cost $16.95. I even used candles from previous years' parties. So all up cake cost about $30.

Party bags had the usual - lolly pops, bubbles, nicknacks like a ball or hair clips.

In the end, all that mattered was that my son was happy and felt special. I'm certain he did. He was just thrilled to have a bunch of friends over to play. And his mind was literally blown to have kids he usually only sees at daycare, in his own backyard.

So, happy birthday my darling boy. I hope we can keep it fun, simple and, yes, cheap for a few more years.

I'm not quite the kind of mum who prepares a Pinterest mood board for 12 months in advance of her child's party but I always want Riley to have an awesome day on his birthday. This year I said, "we'll just do a cool activity with friends and then bring everyone back to our place for cake." No biggie. Sounds simple and non-expensive. Ha.

Part 1: The 'cool activity' with friends.

Riley is witty and confident (no idea where he gets that from!) and walks around the playground with a Taylor Swift-style squad at recess. Naturally, he wanted to invite 800 people to his party, but we narrowed it down to five of his besties.

We ventured out to Skyzone Trampoline Park with two carloads of 10-year-old boys. I struggled to stay focused on the road between Queanbeyan and Belconnen, I was trying so hard not to laugh at their banter. The boys talked at maximum volume about soccer, pooing and weeing, and whether WWE wrestling was real. They wanted to listen to Kendrick Lamar's new single Humble (187 uses of the F word and counting) on the car stereo but I said no and put on some Bruno Mars instead. I like me a bit of Bruno.

Skyzone was great for the 90 minutes we were there (although I alternated sipping a burnt coffee with rehearsing a potential 'such and such broke his arm' speech to a mother over the phone). Then it was back to our place for Part 2.

Part 2: Everyone back to our house for cake.

Back at home in Queanbeyan, more friends, grandparents, cousins, neighbours, dogs and cats streamed through the front door and out to the back pergola under the lure of a WWE-themed birthday cake (complete with talking John Cena doll).

I had arranged two very special guests - a biker scout and a shadow trooper from Canberra's premiere Star Wars costume troupe the 501st Legion. They got dressed in our master bedroom and made their grand entrance (from the bedroom to the pergola) to a YouTube rendition of the Imperial March.

The little girls in the crowd screamed and cried, and ran for a comforting lap, while the boys all stopped in stunned silence.

Riley went into instant show-off mode and posed for photos, but it took a while for the other kids to warm up. A game of ping-pong between the evil Star Wars characters broke the tension and the party was back in full swing.

The kids played pass-the-parcel (I embarrassed Riley by not putting a lolly or a toy in every layer of the parcel) and musical statues (kids under three were given about 30 seconds grace after the music stopped).

It was a cracker of a party - which went for a whopping six hours in total - but it came at a cost. More than $900 to be exact. Did it push the boundaries of birthday party extravagance? Nope. Did it meet all the criteria of a modern birthday party experience? Yep. Do I feel like most Canberra parents would have spent $900 on presents and a party for their 10-year-old? Absolutely (and then some).

So happy birthday to my handsome prince Riley and to my colleague Megan - start saving!