My daughter recently had a birthday party to attend, and as you probably already know, I'm a sucker for creative gift wrapping [1].  I didn't have much time, but I DID have a bag of assorted balloon shapes and colors I never got around to using for Niamh's Stampy Longnose Minecraft birthday party [2].

Also, plain yellow bags left over from making the Stampy Minecraft favor bags [3]. It was a busy weekend, and I did not plan ahead, and I had very little time to consider either the present (which was for a tween boy, totally out of my balliwick) or the wrapping.  But everyone likes balloons, right?  

So I blew up a bunch of random balloons.  Different colors, different shapes, different sizes.  And shoved them in the bag.

And I thought it was awesome.  And my 7 year old thought it was awesome.  But to be perfectly honest, my 12 year old thought it was too flashy and was rather embarassed taking it to the first boy/girl party she'd been invited to in several years.  Too bad.  I made her take it anyway, and guess what?  All the kids loved it and had a great time playing with the balloons.

Balloons are ALWAYS a good idea.