Birthday Party Help!!

Ok...let's start out by saying, I do know that I still have about four months before it's my daughter's birthday, but I like to be prepared. As you can tell from my serious lack of posts, working full time, going to school, and being a single mommy doesn't really leave all that much time for little things. Trust me, blogging is great and seriously can be relaxing. Anyway...on to the party stuff.

Her Chosen Theme:
For any of you that are unfamiliar with this book, here is the basis: A girl makes pink cupcakes with her mom one afternoon and keeps eating them and eating them until suddenly she actually TURNS pink! Her hair and everything. Her mom takes her to the doctor and he says that the only way she can return to normal is to avoid eating anything pink and counteracting the effects by eating lots of green stuff. It's a really cute book and has become a serious favorite. I picked it up from a Scholastic book order McKayla's pre-school had. Why not, if I remember right, it was listed for either 99¢ or $1.99. Killer deal if you ask me.

So, for her party...we're looking for any fun ideas to use with a pink/green theme and of course, cupcakes!!
Usually, I can hold my own with the creativity aspect and coming up with fun and festive things for the kids and adults to enjoy. This year...we're struggling. Even my serious adoration for cupcakes isn't bringing out anything. Now you understand why I'm buying things now? With Valentine's Day and Easter, there is pink everywhere! I've been hitting a few clearance aisles and browsing for anything that might spark some hint of "must have".

Here is what we've come up with:

I'm using the above pan to make a GIANT cupcake as the "main" blow-out-the-candles cake. I've decided to cover it using marshmallow fondant, so it will at least taste good. Then, I'll be making a few different types of cupcakes and using cupcake tiers/trees to display them. I'm considering leaving a few unfrosted to frost during the party and let the kids decorate them themselves. If that doesn't work out so well...maybe we'll still have the decorated cupcakes and an ice cream bar? I'm not so sure. Anyway...I NEED ideas. Please Please Please! Let me know if you have any ideas for fun games or activities, decorations, etc. I haven't even decided how to make invites, so even ideas there are helpful! Thanks in advance!! I will post any ideas or crafty things I do make related to her birthday...including pictures since I finally got a new camera!

By Invitation Only

Here we go...we all know that I can be pretty bad at keeping up on things, so since I started this blog a little late, we're going to spend the next few days catching up on a few things. Hopefully, I'll be diligent enough to keep up.

McKayla decided that this year she wanted the type of birthday party that Lilo would have. So, I decided that since Lilo & Stitch isn't exactly the most popular thing at the moment (pretty much impossible to find anything with this theme), I would go with an overall luau with hints of her chosen theme. Since I have been working full time and going to school 4 nights a week, I thought I'd better start preparing early. It also helps that as the graduation themed items start heading to the clearance shelves, the luau stuff is proudly displayed. Her birthday is in July, so if I had waited too long to pick up certain items, we'd be stuck with red, white & blue decorations.

I love making cards & scrapbooking. Cards seem to give an almost instant gratification, so I'm much more thrilled with it. I took on the task of making this year's birthday invitations for our party. I found a really cute design online a while back and was longing to put my own spin on it. I didn't even think to take pictures while I was working on these, but I learned by watching a web tutorial, if anyone would like the link, please let me know, I'd be more than happy to post it. The picture above is my own finished product.
I started by shopping around for invitation envelopes. If you're an avid card maker, you'll know that sets are available with pre-scored cards accompanied by matching envelopes, as great as they are, they don't leave much room for additional bulk. Since I often make cards for different occasions, I find it to be much more cost effective to purchase the card/envelope sets. This was a little awkward, so I took a trip to the Xpedx store in Orem to see if I could find anything. Can I just say that I LOVE this store? Ever since the first time I went, I've adored it. You can basically buy paper, cardstock, vellum, etc by the sheet/ream/roll. I was able to purchase an entire box of envelopes (100, I think...I split them up with a couple of people).
After measuring an envelope and deciding how much "stick" I wanted to show, I started cutting down my cardstock. I already had an entire package of brightly colored cardstock purchased at Wal-Mart ($5 for 100 pages). I selected my colors and a few matching papers to use as accents. After cutting down to my needed size, I took a corner-rounding punch (which I also already owned) and rounded 3 corners of each "card".
The fourth corner is punched with a scallop punch (also previously purchased). Obviously, I didn't use the punch for it's actual purpose in this case, I didn't fully line up the punch to make a rounded scallop in order to make a "bite" mark. Since I had used 2 different colors to make the invitations, I used the large scrap pieces I had from each sheet, cut them down and made the stripe across each card and attached with a gluestick. After putting 20 of these together, I decided it needed something to highlight, I dug around in my supplies when I decided what better color to use than white!? I took out my white ink pad and brushed it directly against the edges of the cards, giving them the "frosted-just from the freezer" look.
I stamped on "You're invited" with just regular black ink and a stamp from my collection. Since I already had the scallop punch out, I used it to punch out the blue scalloped circles. I put one "pop dot" (for the purpose of cards, I look for these at our local Dollar Tree locations, you can usually get tons of them for $1) on the back and attached. I used glitter paper to cut out the 4s with my Cricut. I only had small, square "pop dots" available, so I cut a few in half to fit on the backs of the 4s and attached those as well.

I took advantage of the cute fonts on my laptop and printed the information (Date, Place, Time, etc). I cut these apart using a regular cutter and gluing them into the cards with gluestick. While scouring the dollar store, I found 100 popsicle sticks in a package, I was SO excited, we use these for various art projects and knew I wouldn't be hanging on to these forever. To attach the stick to the card, I used TackyTape, a product I also love! For those not familiar with this, it's basically a VERY sticky version of double sided tape. This comes in several widths, I selected the thinest, since I have a few other projects in mind for this. Each roll is about $3, not too bad, I didn't use much on each card and I have a lot left. I cut lengths of about an inch or so and attached it directly to the popsicle stick. When I was ready, I took off the red, protective coating and put in place. Again, TackyTape is extremely sticky, once it's touching, it's stuck...so be careful!
Cards naturally want to pop open a little, even if you've creased them well. To avoid this and give it an extra cute touch, I found a matching ribbon (through a great sale at JoAnn's), I wrapped a length around the stick and tied a square knot. When you slide the knot up, it actually holds the top portion of the card down. I asked people to RSVP and several called or sent texts to me just to tell me how much they loved the card itself!