Glad you enjoyed my guest post. I had to laugh at your retooling pin the tail on the donkey. We actually did exactly this a couple years ago, my son wanted a space shuttle birthday party and I drew a picture of a space shuttle on poster board and the kids ‘pinned the flame’ on the shuttle! It was great.

One of my son’s friends had a pirate party; they used fabric remnants for pirate bandannas and eye patches, had a pirate treasure scavenger hunt in the backyard (run by the birthday boy’s older brothers), and enjoyed junk food “loot” – I’m pretty sure the whole affair cost about $50. It was incredibly cool.

Don’t forget pinatas (sorry – can’t find the tilde!) as a cheap and fun party activity. Our Wal-Mart sells them empty; you just buy el cheapo candy and fill them up.

You can re-tool classic games to match your party theme – pin the tail on the donkey can be pin the smokestack on Thomas or pin the tail on Pikachu. The excellent website dltk-kids.com has invitations you can customize and print out – we’ve used them for the last five or six parties here. They have cool craft ideas, too.

Girls love craft activities at birthday parties, so you can let your imagination go wild. One of my daughter’s friends loves the princess theme so much she has a princess dress-up party every single year. They all come in pretty dresses, eat homemade pigs-in-blankets, do a craft project, sing over cake, open presents and go home. Perfect. Totally fun. Incredibly cheap.

Thank you for injecting a healthy dose of reality into cyberspace this week!