Everyone, at some point in their lives, faces the difficulty of coming up with a cute and creative message to scribble inside a birthday card.
To save you all the excruciatingly intense thought-process, below are generic phrases that can be used through all levels of friendships.
Depending on your relationship with your family, the continuum can go one of two ways: extremely sentimental or outright insulting.
If you consider yourself to be relatively close to the person, you can afford to share silly things, bring up old memories, or leave a thumb print of tomato sauce.
If this is an acquaintance you're talking about, e.g. a colleague or your doctor, you might want to consider coding the birthday message in some language that's not commonly used. It's still casual, yet creative.
Quotes are always cute. Not only can they fit in any of the categories above, but they also can fit in any category ever. Databases like Brainy Quotes or ShutterFly both have birthday categories. Brainy Quotes will even let you look up authors by birthday.
Remember to credit the author; sometimes, that's more impressive than the actual quote.
"If you live to be one hundred, I want to live one hundred minus a day, so that I’d never have to live without you." (Winnie the Pooh)
"We know we're getting old when the only thing we want for our birthday is not to be reminded of it." (Anonymous)
"Last week, the candle factory burned down. Everyone just stood around and sang Happy Birthday." (Stephen Wright)
*Quotes grabbed online.
If you have time, mail the card. Not only does that show support for the postal service, but it also shows that you took time out of your busy schedule to do something nice.
Handwritten things still impress people and it provides a tangible memory that they can later stick into their scrapbook or photo album.
Get creative!
