Creative Birthday Party Ideas

Some of my best birthday memories as a child include the creative parties my mother used to plan. Instead of simply purchasing supplies from a party store, she used our birthday parties as a chance to be creative and to encourage creativity in her children. Original party ideas not only stand out, but also usually cost less than parties using standard supplies.

Listed below are just a few ideas to get your creativity flowing.

1) "The Hungry Caterpillar" (book by Eric Carle) Party:

• Bake a cake using a bundt pan. Be sure to follow the bundt cake instructions on the back of the box of cake mix. Slice the cake in half and line up the edges to form an "S" shape. Decorate with red and green icing to look like the "Hungry Caterpillar," and use pretzel sticks for the antennae and legs.
• Make sugar cookies in the shape of the caterpillar’s food. Before baking, poke a hole in each cookie to make it look as if the caterpillar has eaten through it. Decorate with icing or paint with food coloring.
• Serve food items from the book, such as watermelon, ice cream cones, cupcakes, and pickles.
• Make a centerpiece by placing one apple, two pears, three plums, four strawberries, and five oranges on a nice platter.
• Write "But he was still hungry...," on the edges of paper plates and napkins.
• Decorate the walls with pictures of butterflies.

2) Construction Party:

• Decorate with small orange cones (like the one that kids' soccer teams use for drills), and use yellow caution tape instead of streamers.
• Place food, plates, napkins, or silverware in the back of a Tonka dump truck
• Crumble Oreos on top of the cake, and decorate with toy construction trucks. Make a construction site by shaping crumbled Oreos to look like rock piles, making "roads" in the icing with a knife, and using pretzel sticks to look like logs.

3) Princess party

• Have guests to come dressed in pretty dresses, and make paper crowns for each child to wear. Or, have the guests decorate their own crowns with glitter and rhinestones at the party.
• Make a castle cake by baking a sheet cake, cutting it in half, and piling the two layers on top of each other with icing in the middle. Ice the cake and use iced sugar cones as turrets. Decorate with gumdrops or other candy.

4) Candyland party

• Make grab bags containing the candy and treats from the board game.
• Use colored construction paper to make a multicolored path around your house, even on the walls and ceiling, as a decoration.
• Make a Candyland cake. Bake a sheet cake and frost it with white icing. Use sweet tarts or other colorful, flat candy to make the path. Place candy canes, gumdrops, and other candy around the board in the appropriate places.
• Make placemats that look like game cards. Glue one or two squares of colored paper in the center of a larger sheet of white paper. Laminate, if desired.
• Play Candyland!

Above all, have fun! With just a little creativity, you can design an easy, inexpensive birthday party that your children will never forget.