The Circus is in Town!

I've been meaning to blog about my youngest daughter's party for forever.... I mean she turned 4 in February so only a few months behind right :o) Anyways, my youngest daughter Abigayle wanted a Circus themed party this year. As a mother who LOVES party planning I was beyond excited when she told me this. I planned for months and had all my ideas thought out and things pinned on pinterest. I love doing graphic work, as I have a shop on etsy for that (www.etsy.com/shop/GroovyGraphicsNmore), so I decided I would make everything needed for the party. I started with the invites. I made the ticket design on my photo editing program and then after printing and cutting attached them to colored cardstock, standard circus colors of course! I then took my fancy scissors and trimmed around the edges, stuck them in addressed envelopes and sent them on their way. Everyone loved the invites!

I also made the directional signs for the circus, the game signs, and the can game cans :o) I told you I was a little excited for this party/theme. My daughter Abigayle loved it too!

For the big top circus tent part of the party I went to my local Dollar store and purchased some red and white rectangle shaped table cloths. My husband helped me hang them starting from the middle of our living room and draping them outwards towards the wall. These pictures do NOT do the awesome-ness of the big top tent any justice. It was truly amazing in person and everyone, even the adults, loved it!

Sticking to the theme for food I had Peanut (In the shell), Popcorn, Punch, Chips & Cheese, and Hot Dog (even found the cute little hot dog containers).

I did some color themed cupcakes and a number 4 cake (in Abbie's favorite color) I even thought we should stick a little lion of Abigayle's in the "Cupcake Cage" :o)

I also make hair bows so I made a Circus bow for each of my daughter's to wear at the party. All in all everyone, especially the birthday girl Abigayle, had a great time and it will be a party to remember!

You can't see me!

Our youngest child, and only son, will be turning 3 in June. I am both happy and sad, like most mothers :o) 

His newest interest in wrestling. Not just any wrestling but WWE wrestling! What can I say.... he is 100% boy! A few of his favorites are John Cena (of course), The Rock, Sheamus, Big Show, and Kane.... just to name a few :o) 

When I asked him what kind of party he wanted he looked at me with that serious little face of his and said "Mom, don't know." So I started naming off stuff, Spiderman... Cars.... Construction (Diggers, Trucks).... and then I said wrestling! He shouted "Yeah! Yeah, Mom! Me want Cena party! Cena's great!" So a couple weeks went by and I asked again what kind of party he wanted and he still insisted on a John Cena party, not wrestling in general, John Cena! 

I sat down and made his invite for the party last night, graphic design is yet another one of my many crafty hobbies I enjoy doing! :o) I wanted to share the invite now, even though I am sure I will eventually share more Cena party pictures after the party, but I just couldn't wait that long to share this!!! I knew what I wanted in my head and upon searching and searching for what seemed like forever I could NOT find the fonts I wanted to use. So what did I do you might ask..... I made the font look the way I wanted it to look by simply editing it using my favorite program, gimp! When our son woke up today and after breakfast I showed him the invite, hoping to get his approval :o) He loved it!!! 

So what do you all think? Is this a worthy John Cena birthday invite??

Pirate Party Invite

My youngest child and only son Trace is turning 2 at the end of the month. He is in love with Jake and the Neverland Pirates so that is the theme we decided to go with. We are also doing his party at our local zoo where we will get to do hands on feedings with the giraffes. To fit the theme I had to do something special for the invites. Being a graphic designer I always custom make my children's invites, but this one had to be more. Why.... well just because!

So I started to rack my brain of what kind of Pirate themed invite I should do for my son. Then it hit me!! Why not do a Pirate Treasure map invite?!? Genius! So then I started working on the rough draft, first I had to color and design the treasure map looking paper, then I created the cute little map to follow to the X, after that I scribbled down a few cute sayings till the perfect one jumped out!

After creating the invite, getting the ok from the hubby, I printed them out and began to get ready to finish these pirate invites so they would be ready to hand out. First my husband and I carefully burned all the edges to the invites to give them a more pirate treasure map feel. Then to make them even more treasure map like, we rolled them up and tied them with a black string.

My son loved handing these out to our friends and family members, he wasn't 100% sure of what they were but he enjoyed giving them away.