Birthday Party Planning Made Easy

Maybe your kids are too young for a sleepover extravaganza, or perhaps you just aren't mentally ready for that kind of drama. So instead, invite guests over during the day to celebrate your child in their favorite pajamas! Play games like Musical Pillows, and instead of Freeze Dance, play Sleep Dance where players fall to the floor and pretend to be asleep when the music stops. For dessert, serve colorful cereal marshmallow bars (with candles, of course). At the end of the party have everyone sign and decorate a plain white pillowcase with fabric markers for the birthday girl or boy.

For the kid who loves to build, take a birthday party to new heights. Create contests with his existing building toys like LEGOs and wood blocks, and mix in a few old-school favorites like playing-card constructions and marshmallow and toothpick towers. Surprise the birthday boy at the party with a new building toy that he'll get to explore with his buddies. For his cake, pile up doughnut holes as high as you can, pour liquid frosting over the top and finish it off with candles.

No time to shop for your child's birthday party? Raid the supply closet at work—you'll be amazed at the possibilities. (Shh, it's our little secret!) Give each kid a "Hello My Name Is" name tag, and plan an afternoon of fun activities like racing paper airplanes and making pinwheels from highlighter-colored copy paper and brass fasteners. Hand out mini notebooks and colored pencils as party favors.

Relish the first birthday party; it's the last time you don't have to entertain your kid's friends with pirates and princesses or pass out plastic party favors. It's all about you and the sentimental anniversary of your baby's birth. But you do want the event to be special, so decorate with the most beautiful thing you know: your baby's face. Create a photo garland of pics from the last 12 months, and print out circle labels with her face to decorate cups, paper napkin rings and party favors. You can even make an edible photo to top off her cake!

There is seriously nothing easier than throwing a movie party for your child's birthday. Choose the flick with your kid, hand out kid-made paper tickets and have the birthday boy or girl tear them at the door to the living room. Set up a simple buffet of movie snacks like popcorn, M&M's and gummy bears for the kids to choose from; press play and kick back for the most relaxed party you'll ever host! It's just too bad you can't use this one every year. (Don't forget to silence your cell phones and pagers…)

You don't have to dish out a lot of cash and hire a magician for a birthday party. The joy of young kids is that even you can fool them with some self-taught magic trick. Search the web for easy ones like these, and you'll see an audience of little dropped jaws in front of you. Invest in a cheap hat and wand for effect, tie a black sweater around your shoulders for a cape, and abracadabra! Next thing you know, you'll be pulling a rabbit right out of your hat.

Sometimes a little color is all you need to create the happiest of birthday parties for your little one. For this shindig, decorations are easy: red plates, green napkins, yellow forks, blue spoons, orange balloons … you get the picture. Play a fun game where kids have to create a rainbow (yes, in proper ROY G BIV order) from a cup full of jelly beans or M&M's. What to serve for dessert? Choose from an array of gorgeous rainbow treats. Seriously, you can't mess this one up.

Use your kid's stuffed animals or figurine collection to decorate for this low-maintenance birthday party. Create a simple activity based on three or four of the animals. For example, play Pin the Tail on the Monkey, Memory (to represent an elephant's good memory), a bunny-hop relay race or even a Hungry Hungry Hippos tournament of champions. And the perfect party favor? You guessed it: a box of animal crackers.

How do you entertain a dozen tweens at a birthday party? Buy a bunch of fun-colored nail polishes at a dollar store (let everyone take one home as part of her favor), and set up a little salon complete with cotton balls, nail files and the latest in nail décor stickers. While their nails are drying, bring them over to the hair salon for some fun color action with hair chalk. For dessert, serve cookies shaped like tubes of lipstick, hair dryers and hair brushes. Bonus: They're much easier to eat than a cupcake when nails are wet.

Turn your kid's party upside-down, inside-out and topsy-turvy with a backwards birthday party. Tell everyone to dress for the part, either with their socks on their head as a headband, or their pants inside-out. Make a name tag for each kid with their name spelled backwards, and reinvent the rules of classic games like Red Light, Green Light (red means go!) and Goose, Goose, Duck. Ice the bottom of the cupcakes for the final backwards delight.