There are several resources for making free birthday cards. American Greeting Cards company has printable cards on their website that you can actually design yourself. They give you a template for printable birthday cards, and some words to work with but you can change everything. I know in my town, I can go to Wal mart and get a package of 500 sheets of cardstock for under $5.oo- that’s a penny a page, which is a bargain compared to the $3-$5 they want at the store for ONE birthday card.
One thing we’ve done in order to preserve ink when printing homemade birthday cards is to paint the page with watercolor paint first, then allow it to dry and iron it if the page has warped (it shouldn’t with card stock but sometimes the kids use more water than paint – it happens)
Anyways, once it’s ironed out nicely, just run it through the printer with a black image (I’m always so tempted to say black and white but really, there’s no white)
You could use this for invitations, too.
comes in pink and blue (blue is shown here) and the song is absolutely adorable, someone got my daughter one of these for her first birthday, it’s like a little music box, not electronic. I don’t know about you, but I hate electronic sounding toys. As always, it was a bit loud but I have a trick, I put a band-aid over the little speaker holes. The padding muffles the sound just enough. Also for first birthdays there’s the 
which also comes in both pink and blue (both are pictured) in case the idea of a musical bear is just not what you had in mind. The Gund bears are nice and small, so baby can take it with him and snuggle with it. Finally, the 
comes with an all natural bubble bath, I know my babies love bubbles and it’s nice when you know they won’t hurt baby’s eyes.
I think that three of them would make an excellent little gift, for playing “the three bears” My toddlers love puppet shows, so we tend to have a lot of puppets. As a mom, I’ve only performed a few but the kids create a lot of puppet shows, it’s good for their imagination. Then there’s also the adorable 
, I don’t know about you but my kids cherish the cards just as much as the gift sometimes and even my oldest has a little stash of her favorite cards from over the years. This one would definitely make it into the stash, popups are so cool and this one is HUGE. Finally, the 
is absolutely genius. I’m thinking for teens or even adults. My oldest daughter is 15 and likes to listen to music when she falls asleep, I’m always wondering if it’s dangerous to sleep with ear buds in, she could strangle herself or maybe not hear the smoke alarm. With this iPod speaker pillow, she could listen to music when she falls asleep and not endanger herself or scare me. If I had one, I’d probably listen to guided meditations or books on mp3. 
