Logan's birthday invitations

I feel the need to preface this post with: I do not make cards, my 'scrapbooks' are videos that I make at the end of the year. I ordered both Cyan's AND Alex's birthday invites last year and I loved it! However, I do love paper, and I think that my love of paper is what got me so enamored with this project.

Ok, now that we have gotten that out of the way, today I made this:

This and 8 more just like them are sitting on my table... and before they get handed over to grubby toddler fingers I decided to make record of my card making adventure.

It took buying $30 worth of materials (because I do not scrapbook or make cards!), 10 hours over an exacto knife (literally, and then the tip broke off, so I was trying to get strait lines with a BROKEN exacto knife), getting a massive cramp in my hand from lining all the pieces with a sharpie (which I am still nursing), and going through not one, but two prototypes to get it... but oh goodness it is cute! And I doubt that I have ever been more proud except when I gave birth to my children.

I got the idea here. This lady is just as crazy about parties as I am, and she makes beautiful cards! I love all her ideas that I have seen so far, and I started following her blog so I don't miss any that are to come. She is a party genius (and she has a newly 3 year old boy... how cool is that? Can Logan have an Internet buddy?).

So, now that you can tell I have had WAY too much caffeine this week and am completely crazy about birthday parties, I think I should show you my ideas for the party... but I can't.... because the cramp in my hand is making it hard to type.

I can tell you that the gift bags include a CD with this song on it... and more...

Alice in Wonderland Party!!!

The invitations are out! It's time to party!

Yesterday was Cyan's very merry 8th birthday party!! My sweet little Alice was all decked out for the occasion.

Between my best friend and I, we took 312 pictures yesterday. So I decided to not put them all up here. ;) I did however, set up a photo album of a few select shots of the party... and let me tell you, it was my craziest, most elaborate, and yet, best planned party yet! The kids had a blast! It was a bunch of crazy fun!

Link to photo album of party

Here are a couple of highlights:

The party started off with 'growing cookies'...

Boy did they ever work!!!

How could Wonderland be complete with out a crazy Queen of Hearts and her red paint???

I found this fabric and it screamed: crazy Queen of Hearts apron!

Games and other fun...

Then of course we had the cake.

And infant oysters tucked into our gift bags, that very easily could be turned into dinner by a wandering Walrus or two.

Invitations to Wonderland!

Cyan's birthday is on the 13th. Her party this year is Alice in Wonderland. I have gone a bit over the top, but I always do for their birthdays, and I love it. Really I do. This year, everything for this party seemed to just fall into place. Her costume was found and perfect, I have been collecting tea cups and tea pots from every garage sale I come across and I have had some really wonderful finds too! And then, the invitations. Our whole group has these huge kid parties. We have figured out that if the invitation sets the mood of the party for the kids, then the whole party is already a success. Each and every child spends a week being excited about it, get ready for it, picking their outfits, and gifts to bring, etc… The party is already a bang without us even having to plan killer kids games. (But of course, we still plan killer games. This year it is painting the roses red and croquet of course. )

The caption on the cute little piece of paper rolled up on the back of each envelope says "Find a looking glass close at hand to read your invitation to Wonderland!" And when you get to a mirror there is this:

Cyan Elora requests
the pleasure of your company
in Wonderland
for the celebration
of her very merry 8th birthday

Saturday July, 11th 3pm

Follow the white rabbit to (our address)

Respond to Val @ (our phone number)
or off with your heads!

As for the rest of the party... well I am sure someone there will be taking pictures. ;)

These wonderful invitations came to me by way of a chance google search... and Viva la Violette. She built this custom invitation for me in a matter of days and sent them priority so they would be here in plenty of time for sending. She is even using some of the ideas in her shop. Wonderful customer service! I will be recommending her to my friends. (And just as an aside, it was only $6 more than it would have been for me to do it ALL myself, to have them custom made and shipped to me! I was really impressed!)

Logan's owl party

A link to the slide show of 'ok' pictures of the party.

The party was great! You really can't get a perfect capture of a nighttime party in Jan... unless you have a pretty darn amazing camera and a lot of patience (and time!). I tried to get as good a pictures as I could with my camera and very little time so most of them are fuzzy... but the party was so much better than the pictures. A little scattered because of some technical kitchen difficulties, but all in all I think it turned out so wonderful!

The kids LOVED the twilight treasure hunt! I had put candles at each station (Alex helped a LOT with this set up) so they could tell where they were going and the stations were spread all over my yard. Each little spot had a treat to pick up... all night time bird themed stuff too. Cricket Clickers, gummy worms and frogs, chocolate coated sunflower seeds, bubbles (ok, I stretched, but the kids loved them!), LED flashlights (for pure toddler pleasure), a set of three 'eggs' (speckled candy rocks), and a braclet I made with bells on it that I thought they would like. It was great and they had so much fun! I really enjoyed watching them run around the yard yelling at their parents, who were following with the candles, "Hey mama! Look at what I found over here!" and "There's another one!!" So cute!

Logan's birthday invities!!

Can you believe it? Logan is going to be two years old in two weeks.

You pull the ribbon to open it and here is where the information for the party will be. Cute huh?

Birthday Funnies

Dialog witnessed by a dear friend between my daughter and her 6 friends at a birthday party:



Girl #1: "Just step on it!"



Cyan: "NO! You don't have to, it will go away."



Girl #2: "My mommy squishes them with shoes."



Girl #3: "My daddy gets poison and kills them all!"



Cyan, getting more and more dramatic by the momemnt: "Don't you care about LIFE??"



Girl #2: "They're just bugs!"



Cyan: "Bugs have feelings! They have life!" At this point she starts pinching the other girls (not hard) and saying "See this!?! Do you feel that? That's because you have LIFE!"



At this point, dear friend steps in: "Girls. We all do differently and I think Cyan has something she would like to say. Cyan, what is it?"



Cyan: "I just care about LIFE!" Exasperated sigh and rolling of the eyes as she walks away arms crossed dramatically.



Apparently there was much more to the converstaion that dear friend did not catch beforehand... and all the girls are friends again after dear friend explained that everyone does things differently in every family.



Which I demonstrated as I grabbed a moth from the house and tossed it outside while one of the dads said "You just grabbed that with your hand???"

School Party

A dear friend of mine's daughter had a school birthday party... complete with a school bus. We were all asked to wear 'first day of school' clothes and bring along some show and tell. It was an amazing party and when I get more pictures I will post them, because it was wonderful. Cafateria food, show and tell, heads up seven up, and a bus ride home... how much fun is that for a group of homeschooling girls? They giggled the WHOLE time.

Look at these two friends, waiting for the bus. So cute!