Charlee's Dinosaur 3rd Birthday

Charlee loved dinosaurs and wanted a dino-themed party when she turned three. Her mom Sarah was more than happy to oblige! This was such fun to work on. Here's the invitation:

The invitation was sized a little short so Sarah could adhere pink sparkly party hats on the dinosaur. I love how these turned out!! 

We also made a map that showed the dinosaur park where the party was taking place and how close it was to Charlee's house. But I'm not going to share that image since it's not something I'm going to share publicly. Trust me, it was cute.

Happy happy birthday Charlee!! 

Alice's 1st Birthday

I was thrilled when Jen asked me to create an invitation for Alice's first birthday, everyone calls her Allie Mae. She was having an Alice in Wonderland themed party and it was so much fun to work on graphics for her big day.

Here's the invitation:

At the party, Jen set up plain donuts and lots of glazes and toppings so everyone could decorate their own. It was SO much fun, my boys had a blast decorating their own. 

Jen made Mad Hatter hats for eveyrone with plastic headbands and paper cups. They turned out SO fun!

It was such a fun party, thanks you so much for inviting us Jen, and happy birthday Allie Mae!

Kaius' 1st Birthday

For his first birthday, Kaius' mommy, Breana fell in love with the dinosaur invitation I created for Charlee (I'll get the post up someday!), so we changed it to go with the color scheme she had in mind and I love how it turned out. 

Breana cut out paper hats in orange, blue, and lime green for the dinosaur on the invitations, and then cut out "bite marks" with a scalloped circle paper punch. I LOVE this little detail.

In addition to the birthday invitations, we also created a pennant banner that had the same faux chalkboard background. It said "Happy 1st Birthday Kaiusaurus Rex."

I also made a few signs for the food table. I think the Sweetivore sign is my favorite.

Many thanks to Breana for sharing a couple of photos from the party with me. All too often, I create such FUN items for a party or wedding and I never get to see how they looked. I'm so grateful for clients who remember to share them with me. Happy birthday Kaius!

Gary's 60th Birthday

Gary's daughter, Cari was planning a 60th birthday luau for her dad because he loves to wear Aloha shirts, and I was thrilled to get to design these awesome invitations. Cari wanted a little bit of a Tommy Bahama vibe, but still relaxed. I love a good hibiscus pattern.

She mailed the invitation in #10 sized envelopes in a dark blue color and I created a wraparound address label to coordinate.

A welcome sign graced the front door of the party.

Folded tent cards labeled the food for the buffet.

And a couple of 5x7 signs labeled cupcake flavors and drink options for guests.

It looks like the party was a blast, happy birthday!!

Jackie & Michael's Camping Baby Shower

My sister, Jackie is pregnant with her first baby I was thrilled to get to plan a baby shower for her along with our mom and our friend Joanna. Jackie and my brother-in-law, Michael wanted a coed baby shower and we took a little time brainstorming ideas for a theme. We decided on a camping theme, but there were a few stipulations. The lumberjack theme is popular right now, but none of us wanted to go that route. So no fake beards, no buffalo plaid, just simple camping with a few "tactical" elements thrown in for Michael. It was pretty hard to figure out, but we managed to sneak in a few.

For the invitation I reworked a birthday invitation I created last year (I'll get it up on the blog someday). 

The insert included where to find their registry and rsvp information.

Never fear, the email address and URL have been changed to protect privacy.

I had these printed at Office Depot and I mailed them in Clover envelopes from Paper Source. I actually had most of this stuff printed with Office Depot. It was really easy to upload the files to their website and pick them up from my local store within an hour. I was even able to specify that some be printed onto card stock and some not. It was really, really convenient! 

We started with a sign for the front door (this is the only item where I wasn't thrilled with the print quality):

For the shower itself, my sister was adamant that it be a brunch because she loves breakfast food. So we had donuts, bagels, fruit salad, and an egg/sausage/hashbrown/cheese concoction that our mom has been making for years that she calls "Mountain Woman Breakfast." I made food signs for all of these, including the mimosa bar. 

We also had a big basket full of "s'mores mix" which is a mixture of chocolate chips, mini marshmallows, and Golden Grahams cereal. I don't know why I forgot to take a photo of it!

For table decor, the city my parents live in cleared away some fallen trees and left the wood slices out, free firewood for residents. Score!! We already had a few old lanterns and then we found these little plastic canteens on Oriental Trading. I created a new sticker for them by printing onto full sheet sticker paper. Voile!!

For a favor, we packed up some fixins for s'mores for everyone to take home. I couldn't decide between the two favor tag designs, so I printed some of each. Cello bags and twine came from Amazon.

We also had a station for folks to build their own trail mix. We called it G.O.R.P. when I was a kid, which stands for "good ole raisins and peanuts." Metal buckets and scoops are from Amazon.

To add a "tactical" element to the party, we had the materials and instructions set up so guests could make their own paracord keychain. 

It was only $1.49 to get each page of instructions laminated at Office Depot. Well worth it!

I created some fun signs for a few spots throughout the party venue. This one is my favorite:

Notice the pregnant mama in a few of these?

Bathrooms too!

Wishes for Baby. I love making these for baby showers and first birthdays! I can only imagine that the parents love to read them a year, five years, or more down the road.

We played a rousing round of The Price is Right and guessed the pricing on a bunch of baby items. Considering how much of these things I've bought in recent years, I kind of hoped I'd do better on this!

I'm really proud of how this trio of onesies turned out. I had created three camping-themed designs and I wanted to screen print them onto a few onesies. I wanted navy blue, dark green, and charcoal gray and I wanted them to all be heathered in texture. Apparently that's really not easy to find and definitely not very affordable. Getting them screen printed with my custom design was going to cost between $20 and $27 each. It was simply more than I was willing to spend. One of these days I'll be able to buy a Silhouette Cameo and do it myself, but not today.

I already had these three onesies in plain white. Since I've been dabbling in fabric dyeing, I blended some colors together to get these three. The green and brown onesies were dyed solid and then I added the designs with fabric paint. The space onesie was done with a method called ice dyeing. I wrote up the details on how I did it here. 

We also had a fun obstacle course that involved walking through Legos, changing a diaper, and assembling a breast pump; all for time!

It turned out to be a really relaxed and fun baby shower and I hope my sister and brother-in-law had as much fun as I had. Love you guys!