Last year, my youngest daughter wanted to have a “craft” birthday party at home. That presented quite a challenge coming up with ideas to fill about 2 hours of entertainment. Of course, we included time to open gifts and also to eat cake. Actually, the cake became part of the crafts because we took the time to decorate cupcakes. The girls, being seven years old at the time, needed some supervision, but it was fun. They used the squeeze icing from a tube and some sprinkles in different colors and shapes and enjoyed coming up with their own creations.

Another fun thing we did, but it truly wasn’t’ a craft, was to have a scavenger hunt to look for the next craft activity. I made up clues and then put the crafts into decorated containers that fit with the theme of the party, and also the craft, if that was possible. The girls had a great time deciphering the clues. Sometimes, I’d only have part of the craft available and they had to continue the clues until all the parts were found.

Remember Polaroid pictures? We still have one, and some film. We took pictures of each of the girls, with my daughter. Since Polaroids are obsolete, you could accomplish the same thing using a digital camera if you had your printer at home. Or, if you don’t, send the picture to each child in their thank you note. So they could take them home, we decorated picture frames. You could purchase a kit for this, or simply get any type of frame available at a craft store and use your imagination to decorate. We’ve done anything from wooden frames that we painted to gluing popsicle sticks together to foam frames we decorated with stickers. Picture frames are something that would be good for boys or girls, since it is so easy to change themes and decorating styles.

One of the most unusual things we did was to decorate light switch plate covers. I found wooden switch plate covers. Since she wanted an animal theme to her party, I looked for paper decorations with that theme. The girls painted the switch plate cover and we let them dry while they did other activities. Once dried, the girls glued pictures, used stickers and some glitter and other flat decorations to their frames. I then used Modge Podge to decoupage the frames. If you don’t have, or can’t find Modge Podge, you could use school glue and water it down. The Modge Podge gives your items a nice, shiny finish. The school glue seems to be a flatter finish. The covers turned out to be really cute and I heard from several moms that their girls liked having them in their rooms.

I hope you are able to use some of these ideas either for a party, or just for your individual child. Let me know some of your ideas by stopping by the forum and sharing them.