Three months ago I decided to take the family to our local handmade market for a bit of DIY inspiration and to sneak in a bit of exercise as the kids had been spending too much time sitting down doing nothing. I discovered some really cute handmade clothing, nappy covers, soaps, toys and lots of lovely home baked goods. As the market was held on the grounds of a local school they had lots of stalls located near the playground.
Walking towards the playground Mackenna was stopped and asked if she would like to get involved in a Yoga class that was taking place. She jumped at the chance, so I sent the others off with daddy while I stood and watched her listening and participating in the class. While I was watching I was asked if I'd like to enter a competition to win a birthday party package valued at over two hundred dollars. We'd talked about having a party this year so I thought I might as well enter. The following week I received a message informing me that Mackenna had been the lucky winner.
Many of the parties we've been invited to this year the kids go and do an activity for two hours, mine eat too much sugar and then they come home with a lolly bag and the other children WANT something from the bag. As you can imagine this isn't going to work with a Yoga Party. I've had to rethink all the things Mackenna has wanted talked about all year, now I have to find a tranquil space to create a calm space, it also needs to feel like a birthday party and the food needs to be healthy so that the kids can be relaxed while participating in the Yoga.
After looking online I decided to make our own invitations as this allowed me to add the details that Mackenna wanted. To create the invitations Mackenna and I sat down together to choose the font, image and the size in PicMonkey. Caelan also helped with the wording which made my job even easier. I then took Mackenna off to Officeworks to print off the invitations.
After the printing was completed we walked across the road to a local scrapbooking shop to purchase some cardstock for the invitations. While we were designing the invitations Mackenna had already decided that she wanted to use purple, pink, yellow, blue and red as the colours for her invitations. So when we arrived at the scrapbooking store I had Mackenna choose her favourite colours in the cardstock and we purchased two sheets of each colour (leftovers to be used later). Each invitation ended up costing us twenty cents which is the least I've ever paid for an invitation.
With this in mind I decided to make my own envelope due to the size of our invitation. As the invitation is small (10 cm by 10 cm OR 4 by 4 inches) I needed to create an envelope that wasn't going to be to big. I had Mr Opoes print off an image from Google Images and then he reduced it in size to fit an A4 piece of paper. I traced out the first envelope I needed onto a piece of card (similar to what you would use to do a school project with) as you want something that'll bend easily. I then cut out the shape and folded the flaps inwards.
I then placed the invitation inside the envelope templet and using some double sided tape I marked on the inside of the templet were the tape should stop. You could also use glue for this part but I found the tape easier to work with. I also stuck a coloured jewel on the envelope with double sided tape so that the girls could open the envelope easily.
Mackenna was really happy with the invitation and as each invitation cost me fifty cents to make I was really happy. The girls enjoyed receiving them and they were small enough for the children to put on the fridge or noticeboard at home without it taking up too much room. I was also able to carry the colour scheme though to the rest of the party and each girl received additional items that matched their invitation. This also allowed me to do all the colouring in I needed to do in one go as I knew how many of each colour I needed. So tell me do you make your own invitations or do you buy them. Although this took time Mackenna was over the moon and that's all that mattered.
Megan
