Great Party Favors

Ten Worst Party Favors:

1. Plastic frog with tab on butt that makes it jump.

2-10. Anything that makes noise or stains or is sticky.

I was trying to come up with party favors for SB's birthday that went along with the BIRDday theme, and I just thought I'd share my idea with you. The party favors will be part of my party decorations until they are taken home by the guests.

I'm a big fan of hair clips for my baby girl's hair, and I often get comments/compliments on the ones in Sarah Beth's hair. My bright idea - hair birdies for each of the girls coming to the party. They are much cuter than those birthday party dunce caps that used to be popular when I was a kid.

Something I say a lot is, "I could have made that for nothing!" after seeing something that would have been easy to do myself. Mind you, making 13 birdies is quite time consuming if you want them all to be unique. It's just plain fun and worth doing if you'd like to save a buck... or 50 bucks. Anyway, here's how I did it.

1. Get some Sculpey clay at your local craft store.

2. Roll into a ball and knead it into a slab the thickness of 10 playing cards. Hint: If you place 10 cards on the table under both ends of your rolling pin, you'll get exactly that thickness.

3. Cut out your shape. I like the tear drop shape for my little birdie and I made mine out of a piece of copper foil. If you don't have access to a stash of copper foil you could use an Xacto knife or pottery tool or a even cookie cutter.

4. Bake it in the oven according to the instructions on the pack of Sculpey. (I think it's about 15 minutes on 275 degrees.)

5. Find some stuff around the house and decorate to your heart's content!

6. Hot glue a clip to the back. You can get a pack of 100 from Sally's for about 5 bucks.

7. Take a picture to remember it.

When they're all complete, I will clip them onto a dead branch that I plan to spruce up and use as a tree. It may sound a little glum, so when I get that far I'll post a picture.