Oddly enough, it was my 20 year old daughter who won the September Book Award. Now it is my turn to share a party I did for her when she was 3 years old.   Money was very tight back then, and I needed to do this party on a very strict budget. I went out and bought 15 or 20 large pieces of pink construction paper.   I used this paper for the decorations throughout the room. Do you remember making paper cut-out dolls?  That was the theme.  I made huge single paper dolls as place mats, and smaller ones stapled to paper cups (filled with jelly beans) made placecards/goodie holders. A ring of paper dolls was taped around the light fixture over the table.  I put three large paper dolls on the wall with a sign that said "Sarah is this many years old". The cake was also simple to decorate. I made an angel food cake, and put a ring of paper dolls around the top.  For candle, I just plopped a huge fat candle in the middle hole of the angel food cake, and that way it was much taller than the paper dolls, and no fire risk.   All of this was so simple to do, and took no time at all. With a one year old child underfoot, and baby # 3 on the way, easy and fast was a very good thing!  Best of all, Sarah loved it.  By the way, it became a tradition in our household very early on to dispense with the traditional hot dogs at Birthday parties.  My kids didn't seem to like them much, and never finished them, and I hated the waste of food. In addition, there was quite a lot of talk in those days about kids choking on hotdogs. So..... in our house, birthday parties were the time for "cool dogs"... hot dog buns with either peanut butter and jam or egg salad. The kids always went wild for them, and claimed that peanut butter never tasted so wonderful as it did in a "cool dog"!