Hostess gifts are infamously boring—there are only so many times you can give/receive candles, jam, wine, dishtowels, etc. (ok, wine is never bad). But how fabulous would it be to show your gratitude, not to mention impress the party, with these stunning hand stamped vintage silverware sets? We’ve mentioned the stamped settings trend before, and it’s only growing. Scoop up a set for serving your Thanksgiving feast, or spread holiday cheer with the charming reindeer names set from BeachHouseLiving on Etsy. Next on my list: the amazing My Ice Cream/Your Ice Cream spoons! 

Lately it has seemed like people are ready to let loose, like really party down. In the past month or so, I have gone to Halloween themed dance party in a warehouse, a dance off rave battle in an old school house, and a birthday party featuring tarot card readings and confetti. Now all of this has been fun, but there is really nothing that different about them from the raves of ’90s or the “gatherings” of the ’60s. But recently some Kinect Hackers have been thinking of ways to use the new technology to modernize the party scene.

The above photo is of the Kinect Hack that a group developed for the Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction conference.  The hack invited conference attendees—and if you don’t think conferences are parties you have never seen the potential of jet-lag and open bars—to use Kinect to translate their image into a 3D model of their bodies. Yeah, it’s confusing we know. But this video should help demystify the process for you.

One hacker created a way for dancers to use connect to project the image of their bodies on a screen as if it were through a pinboard. (If you don’t remember these toys, they were those strange boxes of pins that you could press your hand against and it made you look as if you were inside the matrix.)

And while the Graffiti hack, where you align a projector with the Kinect and it projects neon graffiti onto the bodies in front of it, has yet to be used in a party forum, we agree with Wired that it is ripe for the party plucking.

Personally, I can’t wait for this kind of Kinect Hacking to go mainstream and help spice up birthday parties galore.