For my daughter's 5th birthday party last year, the theme was Flowers and Butterflies.   We did the invitations on the computer. We scanned in tiny pictures of flowers and butterflies (which she had drawn) and decorated the invitation with them, then printed out the right number of copies.  I found a simple butterfly birthday cake on the Internet which worked out well. It was the activities which made this party a huge success though.  We had a garden treasure hunt. We have a large garden but you could do the same thing in a park. Before the party I took a lot of photos of things around the garden on our digital camera. Some were particularly coloured leaves or flowers, some were of things in the garden taken very close-up or from unusual angles, such as close-ups of outside lights, a rain guage, the gate, pool hatch, etc. I selected the best pictures and planned a treasure hunt route before hand. The pictures were the clues of the treasure hunt. During the party we took the kids inside for 10 minutes for a game so we could hide the clues outside without them seeing. I gave them the first clue. They had to identify what was in the photo and find whatever it was to locate the next clue, and so on. At the end of the treasure hunt the last clue had a big X on it, and when they got to that spot they had to dig around for the treasure in the fallen leaves. It was a huge hit. They loved deciphering the puzzling photos.  We had a big activity during the party too. Beforehand, I made the background for a big wall murual. It was about 8 feet long and two feet high. I made it out of sky-blue project board and glued dark-green cut out card for grass along the bottom and a whole bunch of light-green stems of different lengths sticking up out of the grass into the sky. I prepared butterflies, leaves, and flowers out of white blotting paper. The leaves and butterflies were cut by folding squares of blotting paper in two, and drawing half a butterfly or a leaf. (When opened you get a whole butterfly or a pair of leaves.) The flower shapes were made by drawing around side plates for circles, cutting them out, folding them into 8, and then cutting a single petal shape. (When opened out you get an 8-petaled flower.) The flowers were all slightly different, as were the leaves and butterflies. I assembled all the flowers, butterflies and leaves in containers (still folded).  On the morning of the party I stuck the mural background up on the wall in the garden, put out the shapes, and put out dishes of dipping colors - for these I mixed water and food coloring. We had blue, green, yellow, pink, orange, red and purple. Each child could dip a butterfly, a flower, and a pair of leaves into whatever combinations of colours they liked. When they opened them up, they had beautiful colours. They then stuck their creations onto the mural, sticking the flowers and leaves onto the empty stems and the butterflies into the sky above. Everyone was stunned how well this worked. Also, I managed to keep the whole thing hidden from my daughter during the pre-party preparations, so it was a surprize for her too. Later we stuck the finished mural up on the kids' playroom wall. It's beautiful.   The trick with the dipping is not to get the blotting paper too dripping wet or it tears when it's opened. You have to dip it quite quickly into the colour and pull it out again. Have the table covered with newspaper to allow the dipped piece to dry for a minute or two before sticking onto the mural. They don't have to be completely dry though to stick to the mural. We used glue sticks and applied the glue to the mural rather than to the still damp and rather fragile flowers and butterflies. Have a practice beforehand to get the amount of dipping right, check the glueing works ok, get the intensity of the dipping colours right. Limit the number of kids at the table at a time. Oh, and have a helpful grandparent handy to prevent chaos!