Children's parties have always filled me with dread.
My Teenagers share the same birthday one year apart, which means they have different sets of friends and when it became the 'done thing' to invite your entire school class to your birthday party, I was staring down the barrel of at least 60 kids!
So we didn't ever do the big birthday party thing for them.
They ummed and ahhd about taking it in turns to have their birthday parties on different days, but neither of them really wanted to give up their actual birthday DAY or the closest weekend to it.
Instead they chose a couple of friends and we took them on outings, or to the cinema, followed by dinner and lots of ice cream.
My youngest, however, was born in July and he's just had his fifth birthday - a party in the park with a bouncy castle, park games like rounders, frisby and football accompanied by copious amounts of cake.
The party bag is undergoing a quiet revolution in my son's playground - the parents are fed up with taking home 25 bags of tat throughout the year so they're thinking of doing something different.
I came across some great ideas for party bags over at ParentHacks earlier; if you're throwing a summer party then you can buy lots of 'back to school' bargains for not very much at all and give them away - kids love rubbers, pens and pencils AND they can put them in their pencil case and take them to school when they go back in September.
My favourite idea was serving party food on frisbies, which were the take home gift!
If you've got any smart party bags ideas, please let us know.
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