Birthday Party Favor Ideas

Everyone loves a bit of attention when birthdays come around, especially the invited guests. Birthday party favors, if they are well-thought-out and creative, can make your visitors feel special. Don’t give gifts because everyone does so at birthday parties, and don’t buy up the cheapest things you can find en masse at sales. If both you are giving and your guests are receiving just for the heck of it, what’s the point anyway? Many people dislike giving goody bags as they feel they encourage a commercial mentality, in which case I feel, why encourage the populist mentality either and celebrate your birthday at all? C’mon, unless you are dirt poor or neck-deep in debt, you can be generous and big-hearted one day of the year. As you put up the birthday party decorations, take some time to think about the kids and adults you have invited and consider their likes. You don’t have to go overboard with the expense, just make sure your goodies are fun and unique, perhaps even useful, although practicality shouldn’t be an overwhelming concern. If you aren’t a kid still or young at heart, dig your ancient memories for those long ago days when you enjoyed receiving completely silly things that you really had no possible use for. You can come up with as many party favor ideas as you can with birthday party ideas and birthday party themes.

Here are a few birthday party favor ideas:

1. Match your birthday party favors to the birthday party theme. So if the theme is ‘Peter Pan’, you can dole out goodies related to that theme. For the kids, you can have pencils, pens, erasers, balloons, stickers, band-aids, hair-bands, brooches, coloring boxes, etc. decorated with pictures of Peter, Wendy, Tinkerbell and the gang. You can also get small stuffed dolls of these characters as well as cartoon DVDs and picture-books featuring them. For the adults, you can get movie DVDs of Peter Pan (the 2006 movie is a great choice), music CDs, books, napkin rings, playing cards, crystalline and china figurines.

2. Organize an art project and get everyone involved. It doesn’t have to be elaborate. In fact keeping it simple will be more fun. Have your guests create prints on shirts or scarves or make colored candles or paint pots or make paper flowers. Whatever they make, they can take home with them.

3. Organize a treasure hunt on your property. Give your guests leads or clues (nothing that will take hours to decipher) to get from one point to the other and hide gifts en route for them to find. Each person can keep the gift they find. You can also have a ‘treasure chest’ at the end, so in case someone is unlucky and doesn’t find anything, they don’t feel left out. The gifts can include diamond-shaped paper-weights, custom birthday cookies, crystal candle holders, candies, custom-made lavender sachets, colorful bandannas, miniature pipes, chocolate coins, and so on.

4. You can gift your guest some beautiful designer soaps in a variety of sizes, colors, and shapes. Soaps shaped like roses, daisies, mannequins, ornaments, birds, animals, stars, leaves, hearts, shells, horse-shoes are sure to intrigue and amuse both adults and children.

5. If you have the time, you can make tiny beaded or embroidered bags for your guests. You can also order such bags or small personalized tote bags. Put in a few candies before you give them.

6. One of the simplest things is to set up a large basket filled with wrapped gifts and have each guest take a lucky dip. You can have expensive or inexpensive presents, anything from crystal wine stoppers to travel candles to strange shaped key rings to skipping ropes to colored play-dough to crayons to rubber balls to Frisbees to stuffed teddy bears.

7. Instead of goodies, gift flowering plants or fruit plants to your guests. Other options include creatively wrapped seeds and bulbs. Of course, such gifts will only be appreciated and not wasted if your guests have an interest in gardening.

8. Keen gardeners or not, everyone might appreciate tiny porcelain watering-cans, wheel-barrows, garden pails, and garden pots. Miniature silk plants, flowers, and butterflies also make great gifts.

9. You can give each one of your guest a mint or cookie tin with a personalized picture and message on the lid.

10. If you and your friends like to read or you want to encourage the reading habit, consider a book exchange. Have everyone bring a gift-wrapped book to exchange with the other guests. Or buy inexpensive, remaindered books and pile them up and let your guests take their pick.