Birthday Party Ideas at Birthday Parade

Birthday Parade is all about birthday party ideas! Hi. I'm Kelly Finn and welcome to the Birthday Parade.

First let me tell you about the site, then I'll tell you about myself. Birthday Parade is laid out so you can find the birthday ideas you're looking for, for the age range you're looking for, in a flash!

There are ideas for babies, toddlers, kids, tweens, teens and adults. Several hundred pages in all!

All of the ideas are in alphabetical order and categorized by theme. Once you choose a theme to look at you'll see all of the party ideas, games and decoration tips listed with a convenient age range next to them.

This means you'll know at a glance if those ideas are the right age for the birthday party you're planning.

You'll also notice that most of these ideas have been written and shared by visitors to this site. Folks from all over the world have contributed their birthday party planning successes, woes, tips and pictures.

If you want to take part, you can share your ideas too! And when you do, you'll be entered into our monthly birthday ideas contest.

The contest is fun. It's my way of saying thanks to all the wonderful folks that take a few minutes out of their day to share an idea. The winning entry gets featured on the Birthday Parade home page for a month.

How it works is simple. Every month readers get a chance to leave comments, ratings and feedback on the entries. Then I go through all the entries that got a lot of comments and choose the one that I like best. You can get more details here.

And that's about it for the site. There are birthday party ideas to read, comment and vote on. There's a contest to enter if you want. And there's the oportunity for you to make a (completely free) dedicated memories page of your birthday party that friends and family can visit and add comments to.

A Little About Me

Have you ever hosted a birthday party where everything flopped? You know, half the guests don't show up, you lose the instructions to the party games, the camera runs out of batteries at that crucial birthday cake moment, and the whole party crawls along until the last guest leaves and and you let out a tiny whimper of relief that you survived? Well I have!

After that never-to-be-mentioned-again experience I realized I needed to step up my game. It dawned on me that there were simple steps I could follow to ensure that another birthday disaster never fell on my hostess shoulders again.

Things like (going out on a wild limb here) having an r.s.v.p. on the invitation and (imagine this one) following up with those who don't r.s.v.p.! Another amazing thought: printing out the instructions for party games so they're on hand and using a simple birthday party checklist so I never miss a "blowing out the candles" moment ever, ever, ever again.

Over the years (my birthday party disaster was many years ago) I've developed an easy, simple method for making sure that every party I host is like a sunny walk in the park while eating a piece of cake! One that I enjoy, my guests enjoy, and most importantly, my family enjoys.

So after a while I thought, "Hey Kelly (that's me), Why don't you make a site all about birthday party ideas?" And I answered myself, "That sounds like a lot of fun!"

But I didn't want to just talk to myself on the site. And I didn't want to just talk at my visitors. I wanted it to be about sharing. Soooo, I got real crazy, spent a bunch of time at the computer, and put up a website where me and whoever else wanted to join in could share all of our ideas. Sort of like a forum, but laid out a lot better so it's easier to find all the ideas and tips.

And that's exactly what I did! Now folks can come in, grab some ideas for their upcoming party, leave a comment if they feel like it, throw a rating on someone's page, write their own page, share their birthday photos or all of the above!

Birthday Parade is still very young, it's a baby on the internet. But guess what, there are 200 pages already and growing every day! Folks like the community aspect and I get a lot of submissions every week.

What I like best are the creative ideas that don't cost a lot of money or time, just a little ingenuity. It doesn't take much to keep guests happy, and sometimes the simple ideas are the best!

So that's what you'll find here. Me working "behind the scenes" to keep this little birthday site going, a great community of party lovers, parents and teens sharing their thoughts and.... a gazillion and one ideas that are all 100% pre-tested and party approved!

So get back to the fun stuff or drop me a line if you've got something to say, or be a sweetheart and link to me, twitter me, stumble me, digg me, etc.