How to Prevent "Party Panic"

It’s Saturday morning. Your youngest child has now watched that show you can’t stand five times, there’s been a fight over who gets to have the iPad, and you’ve made breakfast. Your mind is going through the social gauntlet that you’re going to navigate this weekend to make sure everyone has made it to their practices, games, rehearsals, parties, and that you have enough time to make something your Mom won’t scoff at for Sunday dinner. As you run through this mental list, your child comes up to you as you’re washing pancake batter out of the mixing bowl and says, “I’m really excited to go to Alex’s birthday party today!” Your mind starts to race... you had the invite for Stephanie for laser tag, and then you remember the petting zoo party for Alex. You have a gift for Stephanie, but don’t have one for Alex and Alex is a new friend your youngest child has made and you don’t know anything about Alex except that he must be less allergic to farm animals than you are.

You have now entered the PARTY PANIC zone. You get everyone ready and loaded into the car, and you’re going to make a fast stop at Target to pick something up. Now, you already know that fast, Target, and Saturday are words that unfortunately don’t belong in the same sentence. So, after you’ve spent 30 minutes in Target you have a $10 Lego building kit and the materials for a gift bag that your backseat crew can assemble on the drive. You don’t feel great about this purchase, because the child might not even like Legos, may already have this kit, and you’re certain that his parents are also tired of stepping on small sharp pieces of plastic on the floor from these kinds of gifts. But, you got the job done. You drop your child off at this petting zoo with his classmates and Alex’s parents with this gift in hand and race to get your oldest to laser tag.

If any of this sounds familiar to you, then you’ll understand exactly why we started Cruzzle. We have two children, and have been in PARTY PANIC mode for parties we’ve attended. However, we also realized that we were equally responsible for creating PARTY PANIC mode for our guests. At the time that we started to think of the idea for our company, our kids were really into puzzles. When you think about how you construct a puzzle, it’s interactive and requires all of the pieces to be present to make something larger. Now, take that same concept and overlay it with the big ticket item that your child wants for their birthday. One gift that our kids really loved that we used Cruzzle for was a 3D printer. It was a larger item that we would have invested in for our son ourselves, but wanted to make it easy for everyone to get in on the gift giving action. So, we set the gift up on Cruzzle for our son’s birthday, and then our friends and family were able to buy pieces of the gift instead of having to go hunting for a gift on their own. It gave them the peace of mind that they were spending money on something that our son was actually interested in and also created an unanticipated, but awesome, effect. By everyone investing in this gift, it created a sense of community and excitement around the birthday and everyone was just as excited as we were when we were able to give our son the 3D printer on his birthday.

How can you do this for your child?

It’s super easy with Cruzzle! Here are the steps that you need to take:

1. Go to www.cruzzlegift.com and select the last tab: Sign In.

2. Sign Up for Your New Account

3. Complete Your Profile: Add Your Info and Info About Your Gift Recipient

4. Choose Your Gift

5. Invite Your Guests

6. Set Yourself Up to Receive the Financial Gifts from Guests

7. You’re Cruzzled!

Be the party hero!