Non-Disney, non-commercialized kids’ birthday party ideas

Yes, I wish more people would think outside the box. The BOX being the pre-made party theme for Toy Story or whatever where you just buy what already matches that is junk.

I go further and question the whole birthday party culture. We celebrate by having extended family over for dinner — the birthday kid can choose the food and has a say in the flavour of the cake, which I make. Sometimes they are allowed to invite 2 of their friends, and they are in charge of making the invitations. (Also, my kids are older — 9 and 12)

As for napkins, etc… we use cloth napkins all the time. I have a whole drawer of lovely embroidered, lacey, linen napkins that we use every day because they cost .50 a piece, so I’m not too worried about preserving them.

My daughter’s last birthday we bought some tumbled gem stones and gave her two guests a choice of stones instead of preparing a “gift bag” of the usual stuff — which in my opinion is junk.

My son’s birthday is coming up, and we will have a family BBQ. I’ve told everyone that gifts are not necessary, but if they do decide to bring something, I would prefer if it is second hand.

We did a non-branded race car theme birthday for my son’s 4th birthday. A lot of the stuff I saw in stores in that theme was Nascar, but with Google, it was pretty easy to find non-branded items. I found this great site, racepartydecorations.com, that has a line of non-branded race car games, decorations and tableware called “start your engines.” It’s on sale: http://www.racepartydecorations.com/tableware.htm (I don’t work for them; just a satisfied customer.)

I set up orange soccer cones in the driveway and the kids brought their bikes and trikes to ride around the raceway. We played “pin the helmet on the driver” (see above), and had hot dogs, popcorn and other food you might find at the race track (healthier versions of course.) We had race car stickers and a coloring station set up, where kids could decorate their own racing flag or coloring pages that I downloaded from the internet (search for race car coloring page). We had a race car pinata, also non-branded. I think I found it at Party City, but I also saw one on amazon.com.

For party favors, we gave out Hot Wheels cars, which are still 99 cents at our Target. That was branded, but they are the best, after all. The party was a huge hit, and my son still talks about all the cool stuff we did 6 months later.