This article, entitled UFO Party Favor Not Quite Out Of This World comes from Courtney Rubin at partner site Embracing the Insanity.

So, my oldest child will be turning 7 and we have a birthday party planned. The past few birthdays I have allowed the kids to pick out themes and I have organized games and prizes and decorations of all sorts based on their themes and the random ideas I steal borrow from Pinterest. This year, I am just POOPED and have no time or energy to go all out so I told my sweet boy to pick a place to have this party so that all I had to do was the cake and favors!

He complied and we ended up choosing the skating rink near our house. They provide invitations and all the other generic stuff you need for a quick cake eating/gift opening session and the kids will be free to wear themselves out skating for the rest of the time. FANTASTIC! Perfect choice.

I then asked him what theme he wanted for his cake and the favors and he replied, “outer space”. Not so great. None of the party places in our city have space-related party items other than Star Wars or Transformers (eg, the normal things that young boys his age like), nor do any of the cake places, so it was up to me to come up with something remotely close.

So, I ended up just printing an exciting cosmic picture to be turned edible and placed on the cake by our local grocery store bakery rather than try to create something myself.

Then it was time to decide about the favors. As stated before, my son is not your stereotypical about-to-be 7-year-old. He likes educational things that most kids shun. As a parent, I think this is great, but when looking at it from the perspective of other kids, I knew we couldn’t just get some books on space and call it a day. So, while I did find some very reasonably priced “outer space” books, I knew I needed to get some other usual kid crap to put with them so that the favors didn’t seem too nerdy, for lack of a better word.

I found some glow in the dark necklaces shaped like glow sticks to give the kids when they get to the party so they will glow when the lights go out during some of the songs. That seems kind of cosmic, right? It will also help us identify who is with our party – that’s smart safety mom coming out!

Then, I started trolling Pinterest for one more idea to go along with the books (Pinterest: once again the greatest way to make me feel inferior at everything).

One person made awesome astronaut training packs for her son:

(yeah, that wasn’t going to happen this year) and another made cute UFO treat holders out of mini pie tins:

(of course, those are nowhere to be found in any of the stores around us). I talked to my son about ways to adapt those ideas and we came up with this:

Medium sized pie tins from the dollar store…

…filled with space related junk (rockets, space stickers, glow in the dark planets, milky ways, starbursts, etc.)…

…with a NASA logo glued on top (because this was definitely something NASA scientists would have come up with) – Yes, I realize that from the top this looks more like a tire rim than an UFO, oh well.

While these favors are hardly as exciting as the original ideas from Pinterest, they will also double as little frisbees so technically they are FLYING objects, and they are a little rough in design so we can call them unidentified as well.

I’m kind of just hoping the kids ignore the rough construction and enjoy the books more…we’ll see…