Milk and Cookies
with Linda and Kristen
Milk and Cookies is a savory web venue for cool products, useful tips, and idea-sharing, prepared especially for busy moms like you. From the must-haves to avoid-at-all-costs, we're dishing out tools for a delicious life balance.
Visit Linda's fitness site at Bodies in Motivation and check out Kristen's blog at Swistle.blogspot.com
I haven’t had the pleasure of hosting a party for children yet, and secretly I hope my own kids grow up preferring other celebratory activities on their birthdays because really, it doesn’t matter that the partygoers are only three feet tall, it’s still a PARTY and I would rather drink paint than throw one.
I do, however, like to check out invitations. I love invitations, even when they aren’t addressed to me, and I particularly like creative ones with a personal touch. Check out some of these cute ideas for unique birthday party invites:
Custom printed paper invites. I am a big fan of tinyprints, having used them to create our holiday card last year and Dylan’s birth announcement in February. Their paper and print quality is top-notch, and their designs are lovely. The only downside is their pricetag, which is fairly high. However, if you want to outsource the whole thing and be sure of the fabulousness of the end result, these guys are a great pick.
Fun tabloid-style invites. Want your little one to be America’s Next Top Rugrat? Stork Avenue has some fun magazine-style layouts for invitations.
Shutterfly photo puzzles. This is either a really cute idea or a really annoying one: make your invitation into a puzzle, using a photo with a text overlay. Will the party-goers enjoy putting it together, or NOT?
Printed balloons. Or how about printing your invitation details on a balloon, which the recipients blow up in order to read? (By the way, I don’t know anything about this company but now I kind of want to place an order with them based on this photo alone.)
Handmade crafty invites. Leave it to Martha: a fishing party invitation idea that is both ridiculously complicated and AWESOME. It involves gummy worms, stamps, and something called a “utility knife”. Whatever, MARTHA. (But still! So cool!)
Delicious chocolate invites. Love this: you can custom-print M&Ms with a graphic of your choosing — say, a photo of your kid — and a short message (”You’re invited!”). Then you could package and ship those adorable candies with a printout of the party details, awww.
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So, tell me — do you host birthday parties for your kids, or do you typically spend the day doing other things?
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We do small family things for most birthdays and maybe have a friend over to spend the night, but we have big parties or do something big like a trip (something my 16 year old chose this year) for turning ages 1, 5, 10, 13, 16 and 18. My younger daughter will be 10 a few days after Christmas, so I don’t know what she wants to do yet.
Erica | July 11th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
We do “invite the grandparents over and have cake” parties. But now I am tempted to throw a drink-paint ordeal just so I can choose fun invitations.
swistle | July 12th, 2008 at 12:15 am
you for got the busy moms best friend of birthday party invitations: http://www.evite.com!!! because even though i PLANNED (in my head anyway) to send out real invitations. Next thing i knew it was 1 week to party time and no way was i going to address even 5 family invitations. Luckily my techie family all has email so it works
kate | July 12th, 2008 at 1:34 am
We enjoy giving big parties for the kids’ birthdays. (We usually don’t throw any other type of party during the year so I guess the birthday parties make up for it.) I have bought invitations (to match the theme of the year), made them (baseballs from white cardstock) and printed them off of the internet. My favorite was the Aquarium in a bag that I made for my daughter’s swim party last summer. The idea came from familyfun.com They have really cute, easy ideas for all types of kids parties.
Elizabeth | July 13th, 2008 at 12:17 am
We do throw the big parties for the birthdays. I love the cute invites, but have found for my sanity, the key is to focus on one important thing. For me that is the food and cake, I make all of it myself, so the invitations are just the blah ones that come with the theme. But next year I will check a few of these out, cuz who doesn’t want to drink paint?
Lippy | July 16th, 2008 at 2:02 am
My sister is throwing my nephew’s first birthday party next weekend, and since I am a graphic designer, she casually mentioned she was looking for invites. So I designed something for my nephew and had Kinko’s print it out.
Temperance | July 16th, 2008 at 11:28 pm
did u
Anonymous | July 23rd, 2008 at 7:26 am
did u
Anonymous | July 23rd, 2008 at 7:26 am
I am having a Hannan Montana 6th B-day party for my daughter. and wanted the invitations to be somewhat different.. something unique. Can you help? can you e-mail me sample of design for Hannah party.. This will be a rock star party. maybe a magnetic concert tickets. But I don’t want to spend too much..
Shamine | August 29th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
I am particular on birthday party ideas. I love doing it for my kids, because I really love to make them happy. I wanted them to feel they are special for me. Birthdays are really important for kids, so we don’t have to disappoint them, just plan whatever they wanted the we can possibly do. Do not swear if you’re not sure about it.
kids birthday parties | December 22nd, 2008 at 3:22 pm