A child's birthday party isn't complete without decorations, especially when it's a themed celebration. Luckily it's easy to create a festive party atmosphere. Here are some suggestions:

• Build the birthday child's excitement by letting him or her assist with decorations.
• Set out your child's favorite stuffed animals—wearing party hats of course—to welcome young guests.
• Give kids accessories related to the party theme when they arrive so they can dress for the occasion. This may be as simple as a bandanna for a pirate party or a feather boa for a star-studded Hollywood celebration.
• To make decorating easy, color the party with the guest of honor's favorite hue. Use this color for balloons, streamers and other decorations.
• Let kids decorate the tablecloth. Top your dining table with white butcher paper, supply the kids with crayons and let their imaginations take over. Provide other materials to enhance the decoration. Once they've finished coloring, let the kids glue inexpensive plastic bugs, butterflies, flowers or other fun items to the paper tablecloth to match the party theme.
• Make the kids part of the decorations. If the party is indoors where you can dim the lights, hand out an inexpensive white T-shirt to each guest and turn on a black light for a glow-in-the-dark dance party. (Check to make sure little ones aren't afraid of the dark first!)
• Cover doorways with long strands of crepe paper. Kids will delight in walking through them.
• Instead of decorating the whole house, pick one room and go all out. For example, fill your living room with 100 red balloons and let each guest take 10 home as a balloon bouquet party favor.
• Have guests make baseball or soccer ball decorations out of paper plates and colored markers. They can take these home when the party is over.
• Decorate the party site with tissue-paper flowers. Simply cut four to six layers of colored tissue paper into flower shapes with decorative-edge scissors, poke a chenille stick through the center of the papers and fluff the petals.