When you move to university and move out of your family home, it might be the first time you end up celebrating a birthday without your family or your closest friends. This can be really hard, but hopefully you’ll still manage to have fun on your birthday living in student accommodation with new flatmates! We thought we’d share some tips for how to celebrate birthdays in student accommodation, just to give you some ideas, whether it’s your birthday coming up or you’re thinking of the best things to do for your new flatmates…
Get some balloons
Balloons are one of the best choices when it comes to birthday decor in student accommodation. As adhesives like Blu Tack aren’t allowed, it can be difficult to stick banners up – and confetti is one of those messy things that you’ll end up finding in the fridge and under your bed six months later. Balloons are cheap to pick up in supermarkets, and make for a fun addition to your student accommodation when celebrating someone’s birthday.
Plan a flat get together
University can be an expensive time, and not everyone has the funds to go out all the time. But you can still do something fun as a flat to celebrate someone’s birthday – plan to get together in the shared social area of your accommodation and make a night of it. Club together to buy some cheap party food and some themed paper plates, napkins and paper cups; have everyone provide their own drinks and put together a good playlist with the birthday person’s favourite tunes on. You’ll be good to go and it won’t cost a lot!
Stock up on birthday cards
You might be sharing your accommodation with up to 11 other people; this could mean there’s a birthday in your group every single month, and you don’t want to be making dashes into town to pick up a birthday card each time because you’ve forgotten. Cards are in the top 10 list of things people always forget to buy when they need one, we’re sure of it! By stocking up on generic birthday cards in advance, you’ll always have one when you need it.
Cook together
If whoever’s birthday it is isn’t really one for partying, then do something a bit different and organise a night of cooking. Whether it’s Mexican night, DIY pizzas or creating your own charcuterie boards, cooking together is a brilliant way to celebrate and have fun without there needing to be a party aspect to it. You could even turn it into a Come Dine With Me type of night with scorecards and someone providing a hilarious voiceover… Make sure the birthday girl or boy doesn’t have to do the washing up that night too!
These are just a couple of tips for when it comes to celebrating birthdays in student accommodation; it can be difficult as you adjust to not having your family there, but hopefully your flatmates make it special for you – and you can return the favour, of course.
