Detective You

Detective Birthday Invitations: For organizing a detective party, the invitations must be prepared with special care. This is because the invitations are going to set the tone for all the fun afterwards. Your birthday party invitations can be hand written on special paper that looks old and brittle. (Soaking normal white paper in warm tea liquor can easily help you achieve this effect.) You can put a riddle in it, which your guests have to solve to find out the venue and other details. Don’t make it too complicated, or some of your guests might still be scratching their heads even on the date of the party! You should send out the invitations at least a couple of weeks in advance so that people have enough time in hand to solve your mysterious message and arrange their schedule to accommodate your party. You can also be a little more creative and add to the mysterious charm by sending out an online birthday invites.

Birthday Party Decorations: The decorations should reflect the theme of the party to a T. You can tone down the lights to get a mystery feel. Around the house, you can put up pictures of famous detectives like Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple. Other pictures like pipes and magnifying glasses can also be used. Toy knives, guns, mysterious women, cloaked assassins, cards, broken glasses and skeletons are other pictures that you can use to add variety to the theme. Not only pictures, you can actually strew around many of these things and other detective knick knacks all over the house, to add that special mystery effect.

Detective Games: The games are the most enjoyable part of a detective birthday party. You can get your inspiration from a number of popular “who done it” murder mysteries.

• Solve the Riddle: You can collect a number of short mystery riddles and ask to guests to solve them. For added effect, you can organize this around a backyard campfire. Have your guests sit around the fire in a circle and narrate the riddles one by one. You can arrange some special mystery gifts for the winners.
  
• Treasure Hunt: This is an age old game and you can play it anywhere. But you have to do a bit of planning first. Hide the treasure or prize in a location that is difficult to access, and create a trail of clues to it. Give the guests the first clue; and then they have to solve one clue after another to get to the ultimate prize. You can create parallel trials so that more that one path can be followed to get to the hidden treasure. This is especially required when you have a lot of guests and don’t want them pushing and shoving over the clues.

Detective Birthday Party Crafts: To add more fun to your Detective Party, you can declare that all participants have to have unique headgear as a mark of identity. So all the guests have to wear their own detective hats (or Detective Caps) while participating in the game. There are a number of ways to arrange for this. But first, you have to visit your local craft store to get the required stuff. The caps or hats can be cut out from poster boards beforehand and then decorated during the party by the individual guests. Some things that may be needed for this purpose are dark ribbons, markers, pencil, glue, etc. If you are not up for cutting out the hats, you can also find foam hats and caps from the local store that can also be uniquely decorated. It would be a lot of fun to have all the amateur detectives milling around the house in their trademark headgear, searching for clues all over the place.

Birthday Party Food: The detective theme can also be carried over to the food and cake. Some treats can be specially ordered from the confectioners so that they come in the shapes of pipes, magnifying glasses, knives, guns, cards, bludgeons, etc. The cake can be in the shape of a distinctive Sherlock Holmes hat.

Favors: Everyone loves to go home at the end with some take home gifts. Some good items to include in the gift bags for a detective theme are: detective books, detective caps, toy guns, magnifying glasses, and packs of cards. If you have provided some crafts for the guests, remember that these are favors as well. You can also include chocolates and other treats in the bag, along with the detective party themed knick knacks.

So celebrate your coming birthday in style. Go for the Detective theme for your next birthday bash and surprise all your friends. Follow the guidelines given above and your party will surely be a grand success. Let your imagination run wild and come up with a few original ideas of your own. Read a couple of detective thrillers if you get the time. Put together all the ideas and have a rocking good time when your birthday approaches.