Y’all want this party started, right?

I don’t shop the specials at Hobby Lobby. I find large crowds of children alarming. My secret ingredient in chocolate cake is cake mix. But this year I hosted a DIY birthday extravaganza for my 6-year-old.
The party, which was attended by more than 30 kids, included a faux tropical beach area, craft centers and a pirate-ship cake. The final cost was in the two-figure range.
Here are my tips:
1. Find a free place to party. My apartment’s community center has hamburger-colored walls and florescent lighting. But it also has ample tables, a convenient potty and a playground right outside. Amount spent for these conveniences? Zero dollars. Avoiding the dozens of sneakered feet in my living room? Priceless.
2. Think theme. I chose the sea, thinking treasure hunt (free) and thrift-store props (almost free). Plus it was costume-optional, so guests could reveal their inner Calico Jack.
3. Plan for 2 p.m. (when major meals are not expected). I wasted energy putting pizza dough into a submission hold when potato chips would have sufficed.
4. Do an Evite. Who cares if the Joneses think you’re tacky? This party is for 6-year olds, not their spendthrift parents. Plus, toner can be pricier than chilled Veuve Clicquot.
5. Send out an SOS. Your loved ones can loan you stuff, herd kids and fill up trash bags at the party’s end. My aunt — a relentless thrift store trawler — provided a moveable mermaid mural and a wooden treasure chest.
6. Forsake theme-character party packs. I sprang for basic-blue everything instead. I also found a giant Shamu, a shell-speckled “At the Beach” sign and some plastic pails from Goodwill. Throw in a palm tree made from my mother’s fronded hula skirt, and voilà, we were in Acapulco.
7. Bake the cake. The Internet abounds with information on theme-confections, ranging from your basic sheet cake festooned with candy monkeys to the turreted castle of your kid’s dreams. My pirate ship — battle-ready with Pirouette canons and sword-wielding plastic buccaneers — took only a couple of hours to assemble and totally shivered the kids’ timbers.
8. Forget musical chairs. The trick is to keep the children busy and not you. I offered “centers” with paints and cutouts of sea creatures, coloring-book pages and fish-shaped cookies to decorate. Inevitably, the kids began to crossbreed frosting with acrylic paints for their wooden creations, but at least they were leaving me be.
9. But have one group activity. Kids need a metaphorical period at the end of the sentence. In this case, it meant thundering around my apartment complex on a hunt for chocolate gold treasure. Thankfully, the activity ended outside on the playground where only the foam gift-bag lobsters were eviscerated.
10. Practice Ujjayi breathing, and remember that birthdays are only once a year. Indeed, seeing the kids suffusing a conch’s swirl with purple paint or quietly flipping through “Little Fish, Lost” was more than payback for the late hour spent evoking a raging sea with blue frosting. In fact, next year I’m thinking of a $50 maximum budget and a movie theme. Maybe I should start checking those weekly specials after all.