I am visiting this site for the first time, looking for inspiration to match or better the party that we had for my 8 year old son last year.  We decided on a Bingo party. I managed to borrow a large number of Bingo cards and photocopied these so that the children would be able to cross out their numbers with a pencil and thus avoiding the hassle, stress & mess of using beans or suchlike to cover the squares. My husband then ventured onto the internet and downloaded a program that would act as the game master; selecting the numbers and calling them out. (I no longer have the address of this site but it took him about 5 minutes to find quite a few ... so it shouldn't be too difficult to do it yourself. On the day of the party we set up the laptop PC in our lounge together with a projector borrowed from his office that projected the screen onto the wall. We then set up tables and chairs in the lounge and the games began!!! Initially the boys were reluctant to come inside on a warm summer's evening but once the game started, they were hooked! We started by playing a lot of shorter games where they had to get one row or cover 5 numbers or a diagonal or a L-shape ... the options are limitless and each time the winner received a prize. For the final game the boys had to fill their card and as this was done they each were given a party pack filled with number related goodies and a prize. The cake was a plain rectangular chocolate cake which I had then iced to look like a bingo card except that all the numbers on the squares were his age 8 and instead of it saying Bingo across the top it said Darren - My sons name. Oh, and we also had our local pizza shop deliver pizza towards the beginning of the party. This worked well as hungry tummies were filled with something nutritious and not junk. The invitation? A bingo card. This was one of the easiest and least chaotic parties that we have had (I have 3 sons so have much experience in noisy parties!)