Birthday shopping extravaganza! It sounds expensive, but is very economical, easy and very well appreciated by other parents. For my daughters 10th birthday party she wanted a shopping birthday party. She imagined herself at a mall with her girlfriends on a whirlwind shopping trip at the mall. Realizing that would be very expensive and difficult to navigate I looked into birthday party options at girls clothing store's. They all came up to be too expensive and not giving each girl the value of what I was spending. Instead we had a shopping party at Target. We invited 10 girls. The invitations were pre printed to look like credit cards with all the information for the party where the credit card info would go. The kids thought this was really neat. We all meet out our house prior to the party. Then drove to target where each girl was given a calculator and a $25 gift card. You can purchase lanyards with ID cases for the gift cards so the girls could wear them around there necks and not loose them. The calculators I bought at the dollar store, they came with there own lanyard. I explained taxes to them and then they were set free to shop. Many parents came to assist the girls with there shopping. This would work very well at Wal-Mart too and you can customize the gift cards and have your child's photo printed on it. I purchased the gift cards through a school fundraiser and earned the school money too. After the girls made there purchases. We ordered food right there at the food court. We then returned to our house and had a fashion show, photo shoot and cake & ice cream. In the end the party cost me $288 at target, which my school earned money from. And I baked my own cake, served ice cream, chips, pretzels and drinks. All the girls and parents really enjoyed themselves and we got a real value from the party.