How a controlling perfectionist plans a birthday party: Invitations

Throwing birthday parties for my children is seriously one of my favorite things to do!  It incorporates all my favorite things into one event:  my kids, entertaining, cooking, decorating, creating, classroom management (running my class or in this case, party, in a timely manner), making crafts and spending money!  Unfortunately, not since Jack's first birthday party have we really been able to invite all the people we want to since the Rogers' family alone is about thirty people.

Now as each child has entered my life the more control I've had to give up in the name of sanity.  There was a point where I made every single food item served.  The theme of Lincoln's first birthday was "circles" and I served circle food and if it wasn't a circle I made it into a circle with a cookie cutter, i.e. lettuce, cheese, melon balls.  Now I just rotate between copius amounts of fried chicken and 3 ft. subs ...  someone suggested tuna subs for Maggie's birthday but I felt like that was too close to mermaid cannibalism! 

This week you'll be guided on how a controlling perfectionist plans a party.  Many things I keep the same from year to year and party to party but just switch up the theme and/or colors.  Then I store all my creations and try to reuse them as new parties (birthday, baby shower, or whatever else) come about.   So the first thing I decide would be the theme and colors.  Usually, this is a couple months before the party so there is plenty of time to create everything and it is enjoyable not stressful...but this time I shaved it a little too close!

An awesome mermaid dress on etsy dictated Maggie's party theme this year!  There are soooo many cute Etsy mermaid finds for girls, here are some of Maggie's mermaid favorites if you are toying with the idea of a mermaid party this year!  The two party themes that will be focused on this week will be Mermaids and Octopii.

So first things first, invitations:

created by OhMyGluestick on Etsy

My Etsy "peep" Tommie at OMG! or OhMyGluestick made these invitations for me based on the colors from Maggie's mermaid dress.  She e-mailed me the file, I e-mailed Office Max the file, in two hours my invites were done and I picked them up on my way home from work!  Awesome and easy!  It is hard to tell from the picture but I had them printed on a pearlized cardstock called White Gold.  For a dozen 5x7" invites on the white gold cardstock, cut and ready to give it was under $5.  I used envelopes I had left over from Christmas to mail them out.  If I was a skilled scrapbooker I probably would have made myself...but I'm not!  At OhMyGluestick you can also find party banners, cupcake toppers and the whole sha'bang!  Most Etsy shop owners are very willing to customize anything you for you in their shop or create something new for you...one more reason to love Etsy!

These will be the topics the rest of the week:

Party decorations, crafts/party favors, baking the cake, octopus tees but of course they're will be no food creation entry since I gave that up about three years ago as discussed earlier.