Birthday Ideas & Advice

Everything I know, I learned, after I felt the thirst! Yes, guessed right… I feel almost exactly like Georges Benjamin Clemenceau – the famous French statesman. It was not until I was a 22-years old woman when I showed my urge to celebrate my birthday day after I became an adult. It was the first time I remember, I celebrated my adulthood birthday and I came to know how much different it was from celebrating a kid’s birthday. It is obviously — that everybody knows! But what was really memorable in my party, was the way my colleagues came up in a very unique way

If you are planning to throw a birthday party or if you are invited in your co-worker’s birthday party, this article on co-worker’s birthday party ideas might come to a great help for you to create a perfect bash. Starting from the decoration to food recipe and birthday gift ideas, things are all entirely different from the way we celebrate birthdays of our brothers, kids and other family members.

Let’s start off with the Birthday Invitation

The first impression is the last impression – this is what I believe in. So when it comes to invitation it must hold the right spirit of the party. You can make your own birthday invitation card, if you have ideas. But that would claim a lot of your precious time and no one can afford to invest time out of the daily hectic schedule of life. Why do so, when there are loads of awesome online birthday invitation cards to let your co-workers know that you are ready to chill the drink. Some of them are absolutely free! Picking the right one is all you need to do. Remember that calling over your peeps and inviting your colleagues on your birthday party are different. The co worker birthday cards are different in their style too.

Your Birthday Menu For Your Co-workers

This is again another significant aspect to spare a thought on. Cake is an obvious item to be included in the menu. But you would also want to delight your special guests with some really special dishes. Remember that this is your birthday party where you have invited your colleagues and co workers. The choice of food must match the age group and mood. It all depends on the type of guests invited and your choice too. But don’t forget to include drinks! So go ahead and have fun to the full swing and if you haven’t yet tried Budweiser or Johnnie Walker in your birthday party, it’s the right time to strike your guests with a shriek of surprise with big treats like these! So just keep walking with Johnnie Walker and make your guests rock around with the beats. Try to create a sexy atmosphere with great music and a good bar. Doesn’t matter whether you keep a smart bartender – self help would be more appreciated!

Co worker Birthday Gift Ideas

If you are invited in your colleague’s birthday party, the first thing that might strike your mind is the birthday gift. This is one really toughest decision to make for some people. If your colleague is a beer drinking champion, you can delight him or her with a beer sampler pack. There is no better way you can reach out to him or her than by giving a gorgeous 6-pack sampler of California Microbrews that come in 12 ounce bottles each. This will surely be a fantastic birthday gift and will keep your colleague warm around the campfire immediately after the party will be over.

Any other gift may be fine if that matches the aura of his or her personality. Pick something that will add some “mojo” back into your office. A dollar-sign paperweight, gold push-pins and personalized mouse pad may put smile on his or her face.

Birthdays are special events in everybody’s life. It repeatedly coming to make us feel special. The feelings of birthdays are there from small to big persons. That is why people are celebrating from 1st birthday, 60th birthday, 80th birthday, 90th birthday etc. This clearly shows that the birthdays are very important to kids as well as grown up persons.

Birthday Celebration:

 Celebrations of birthdays are differs according to culture and traditions. In India, Some people celebrate Birthdays with vegetarian dish and going to temple to pray with their god in the morning. However, as the modern culture has spread the birthday celebrations are increasingly changed to birthday parties with Non-vegetarian Dishes.

Birthday and Age:-

Birthday and age is having very important relations. When the birthday person is kid or toddler normally, his parents decide the guest and type of party. However, by the time they go to school the birthday party will change to venue like play zones and MacDonald’s or any other fast food centers. By the time, they grown up the birthday will be something a private function between the friends. By the time, they become 18years the alcohol will be an important thing in birthday party.  By the persons becoming old, the birthdays will be change to an occasion where your kids and their family will visit you with gifts.

 Birthday Poems:

 As the celebrations of birthdays are common, the gift and wishes of birthdays are also become important.  However, Birthday poems also become Lot of importance as People started to write Poems instead of Birthday wishes. Birthday Poems is a great idea than a birthday wish since the receiving person will be more delighted since he knows that you have spend some time to create the Poem.You can find Some online birthday cards with birthday poems at 365greetings.com

Importance of Birthday:

 Now we are living in society where regularly we have to attend birthdays. Our friend and relative will be conducting birthdays for their kids. Most of the time they celebrate the first Birthday in a grand style. Some of them hire halls or hire a restaurant itself for conducting the birthday. Other birthdays normally people will be conducting in their home.

 As the kid grow up the venue of birthday will be shifted to McDonalds and play zones. In addition, the type of guests also will start change. For first birthday, we can see only parent’s friends, where as for 10th birthday the most of guests will be of the child’s.

 Any way the birthday is has become one of the important event in our daily life. And it gives lot of business to local restaurants and bakery.

Birthday gifts:

 While attending the birthdays we have to buy birthday gifts. I used to follow certain rules to select a birthday gift.

Budget for Birthday Gift:- I always will think about the relationship with the family who is conducting the birthday. Also I take a close consideration about the money I am prepared to spend for this function. Another matter I used to think is that how much that family might have spend if invited them for a same type of function. Also I will take the venue and the type of part they are conducting for the particular birthday.

Status of the family:-I never give any attention to status of the family who is inviting me. I always think the status will not help me in any way as it will help them only. The only consideration I give is their relationship and love to my family.

I always consider the sex of the birthday child. Normally small Girl child likes dolls with soft feelings. This I understood by my daughter’s behavior. She use to sleep with her soft doll up to the age of 7 . So selecting a doll as your birthday gift is a very good if the birthday is for a girl. Even if I am Selecting some other gift since I want to make big gifts to the particular family, I will buy another doll along with it. We will get a special satisfaction when we see the kid is walking with the doll we have presented. For Boys I used to select car or toys where they can show their creativity and spend energy.

Birthday Cards:- Normally I used to keep one birthday card with the gifts. Nowadays I used to ask my daughter to make a birthday card herself as I think the self made card is far better than bought out card to express our feelings. Otherwise  I used to print birthday card at 365greetings.com. This way I can write the message and print it on  preview. This will make our message also get printed instead of hand writing.

hill’ is a colloquial phrase used for the very simple term, ‘old’. Where did this idiom come from though? It cannot be known for sure, but the phrase perhaps c a me from the fact that cemeteries in the past were often built on hills overlooking lower areas of towns and villages. Therefore, someone who had passed away would be buried somewhere over this hill. This idiom ‘over the hill’ has been adapted and now  has  common us age in  the english language. Another possibility could be that the first part of one’s life is going uphill, because you’re young and have plenty of time to experience life, explore the world and everything in it, but once you’ve done all of this and you’re at the top, it’s all then downhill, suggesting you are ‘over the hill’.  

I think the age that one feels or becomes ‘over the hill’ differs for each individual. I’m 21 and upto my 18th birthday, I was sure that by my 30th birthday I would be  old;  over the hill, and my parents, who were 41 years and 44 years old at the time, were definately past it. Now that I’m slowly getting closer to thirty, the goalpost for me is changing with anything past 40 years of age now being classed as ‘over the hill’. You see 40th birthday, 50th birthday and 60th birthday cards in greeting card shops littered with jokes about being ‘over the hill’ and ‘past it’. Do these jovial remarks mean that after the age of thirty nine, you can no longer make the most out of life?

I asked friends and family what they thought:

“60th or 65th birthday – Just because it’s the normal age of retirement. Really though, I think being over the hill has more to do with a person’s mental abilities than their age. I know some 80 year olds who still have it together where it counts, and some 40 year olds who are pretty senile already!”  

A neighbour told me that ‘It took me [him] 50 years to look this good!’ – I guess he doesn’t believe that he’s over the hill yet.

I carried out a survey, part-takers had to decide whether in their opinion they counted the following birthdays as being over the hill.

 Birthday - Over the hill?

 Research shows that in today’s society men are living upto the age of 76 and women to the age of 81, as opposed to 66 and 71 respectively during the 1950’s. This is a dramatic increase in the length of the average life, it’s a huge 10 years extra in just 60 years or so, thanks to the development of medicine and technology. So in theory, being 40 years old is only half-way through ones life today, instead of two thirds through one’s life 60 years ago.  To conclude: people used to have shorter lifespans 60 years or so ago, living on average to the age of 66 (males) and 71 (females). The age one would feel or be classed as old in that time would consequently be younger than in today’s society where people are living upto the ages of 76 (males) and 81 (females). When then, is one officially over the hill?  From asking people and taking into account my own opinion, I think that it’s all about perception, you are over the hill when you feel and think you’re too old to live life to the fullest.

While some societies have momentous coming of age ceremonies (boys in Papua New Guinea wear a conical hat draped in leaves which reach to below the waist), we in Britain stick to the tried and tested routine of opening 18th birthday gifts in the morning, then spending the day in the pub getting merry.

But while that’s fun, it’s hardly original and many of us do that every weekend, birthday or no birthday. If you want to be a bit more creative, there are all sorts of ideas for celebration themes which are entertaining, and they don’t have to feel like a kid’s party. Here are just a few ideas, along with some suggestions for suitably themed 18th birthday gifts.

A country theme: There are a couple of ways to do this. One is the classic of picking a country and getting everyone to wear appropriate clothing and eat themed food and drink. For example, a Japanese theme could see guests dressed as sumo wrestlers and geisha girls, eating sushi and drinking sake.

Another twist is to do a global theme where every guest comes as a different country. You can even award prizes for whoever manages to wear the most different items relating to their chosen country. And to make things fun, challenge everyone to find 18th birthday Gifts that relate to the country.

A celebrity theme: OK, so you might have been to quite a few parties where guests dress up as famous people, but there are other ways to do it. One is to limit it to celebrities and public figures from the year the birthday guest was born. Another is that everyone has to pick a famous person with the same first name as the birthday guest.

A Krypton Factor theme: Anyone receiving 18th birthday gifts in the next couple of years should still remember this classic show hosted by Gordon Burns. You can adapt it into a day-long event with your own twists, and either make it a contest for everyone, or just a challenge for the person celebrating their birthday.

The mental agility, observation, intelligence and general knowledge rounds will probably be best during the evening when a few drinks will make them more challenging.

That leaves the co-ordination and physical ability rounds for the day time. If you don’t have a flight simulator in your back garden, you could always pick one of the many flight-related ‘experience day gifts‘ on the market as one of the 18th birthday gifts.

A football theme: If the birthday boy or girl is football crazy, you could arrange a kick-about, go to a game, wear replica shirts or hold a soccer-based quiz. The beauty of this theme is there are dozens of suitable 18th birthday gifts based around football, so that’s one less thing to worry about.

A tube station theme: Challenge guests to find a costume that relates to one of the London Underground stations. This might seem hard, but there are plenty of possibilities. You could come dressed as Paddington (Bear), Victoria (Queen or Victoria), All Saints or Grange Hill – or if you’re really stuck, just sling on a West Ham shirt. If you live in London, you can make the birthday guest go on a station-based treasure hunt before they get all of their 18th birthday gifts.

An £18 theme: Guests have to come in as stylish, fashionable and trendy a costume as they can put together. The only catch is that their entire outfit from head to toe, including underwear and shoes has to cost less than £18. It will challenge their creativity, and it leaves everyone a bit more cash for those all-important 18th birthday gifts.

A casino theme: This has plenty of possibilities. You can serve Vegas-style cocktails, hold a buffet (though it’s unlikely to be all you can eat), and play a variety of games, whether for cash, drinks or just forfeits for the losers. The dress code is up to you: you can theme it with the black and red of roulette, or go the whole hog with evening dresses and dinner suits and don’t forget that cufflinks make classy 18th birthday gifts.

A golf theme: This can be as simple as a night out dressed in polo shirts and plus-fours or something more elaborate. We don’t recommend visiting 18 watering holes, but an 18-round quiz could make the day memorable particularly if each round is about a year in the birthday guest’s life. Lessons with a pro make great 18th Birthday gifts for golf-lovers.

A party themed around the year of birth: For those getting 18th Birthday Gifts in 2008, this gives you the chance to celebrate 1990 with a German-themed party to celebrate the country’s re-unification, or a Russian-themed event to mark the Soviet Union’s collapse.