Yoga Party Decorations

Earlier this week I showed you the quick and inexpensive birthday invitations that I made earlier this month for my daughter's Yoga Party/ You can find the instructions here.  So today I'm going to show you the other things that I made for the party. For months I'd listened to Mackenna talk about what she wanted for her party and all she really wanted was the girls to come and fun with her while they did some yoga, played in the playground and eat some party food. So I tried to make the decorations, cake and favours reflect the playful, happy and chilled theme that she wanted.

I decided a minimalistic approach would work well for her party as it would allow her to spend time playing, laughing and eating which meant that I could also interact with the other parents. We had planned on doing a few different pink and purple decorations, however the park we used can get really busy so the few things I'd purchased from the discount store didn't get used due to it been really windy. 

When we arrived the first thing I did was cover two tables with coloured plastic table clothes because the tables never get cleaned. I also didn't want to have any of the kids get sick because they'd touched the dirty tables. Luckily I'd bought a roll of stick tape with me so when the wind started blowing the table clothes off, I was able to wrap the table like a present and this ensured that everything stayed in place. 

As you can see from the picture above I kept the food quite healthy to work in with the yoga theme. The first thing that I made for the girls to tie in with the birthday invitations were water bottle labels. I made the labels in PicMonkey and then I printed them off at the local copy shop. After cutting them to size (I used the same measurements as the water bottle labels) I used a felt pen to colour-in the yoga ladies outfit, I then used clear contact to cover each label before attaching it to the bottle.

Mackenna had requested cupcakes for her birthday so I made her red velvet ones with chocolate icing just for something different. I made the Too easy chocolate cake from my thermomix Everyday Cookbook with a few changes to suit our party. Mackenna had picked out some cute purple polka dot cupcake cases so I made some cute cupcake toppers that would tie the theme together with the yoga. I used the same elements I'd used for the party invitations and the drink bottle labels. Each child was given the coloured cupcake topper that matched their invitation and water bottle.

The last thing that I made were the gift bags that we gave to each girl when they were leaving. Usually these bags are filled with sugary treats and toys that don't last very long. I thought that because Mackenna had a Princess theme for her Yoga class, I decided to include lots of princess things as well as a few stationery items.

I'm glad that I put all my effort into making these few things for Mackenna's birthday party. At the end of the party every little girl came up to me and thanked me for their water bottles and gift bags. I'm so glad that I went with the colour theme mixed in with the princesses because I think that was something the girls weren't expecting. Overall, it was a great party and I got to talk to a few mums and put a mum to a child's name. I also kept costs down with all the decorations and food. This meant we could take Mackenna out for a special dinner on her birthday which is something we've never done before.

Megan

Yoga Birthday Invitations

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

During the last five months I've had the opportunity to attend a few scrapbooking crops at my local shop. I first started scrapbooking eight years ago just after Caelan was born but back then I spent many hours visiting stores, buying papers, buying cardstock and did I mention buying products. I purchased so much stuff that when it came time to actually put a page together I had know idea what it was that I should be doing. I subscribed to a scrapbooking magazine and every month I'd look through it marking off layouts that I loved and that I wanted to re-create.

 

As you can imaging it's difficult trying to copy someone else's layout, the problem I've always had was trying to identify and locate products that the person had used. It was due to this reason that I started going to classes and then crop nights in the hopes that I could work my way through the hundreds of photography's I have for all the children and to develop my own style.

 

I went off to my first crop five years ago in the hope that I would create something nice with the few photo's and supplies I had. As I was pregnant at the time I spent the majority of the time going back and forward to the toilets, but I was hooked and I've enjoyed crop nights ever since. Back in May I went off to a crop with three photo's, a few supplies and a dream of completing a layout. I spent the first hour trying to figure out what it was I wanted to do and then I had a light bulb moment I found a layout that I decided to copy. It was perfect, the colours were faultless and many of the pieces were in store that night.

After about 15 hours of work I was able to create a double page layout that helped showcase the cross country event that my son competed in this year at school. I was really happy to have completed my first ever page dedicated to Caelan especially after I started scrapbooking back in 2005. I was really happy with the layout and the best part was that Caelan really liked what I'd created for him.

Here are the other layouts that I've created since May and I'm happy to say that in all the years I've been interested in scrapbooking this is the most I've ever done. What do you think am I good at copying other peoples layout's and calling them mine?

I've been thinking that while the children are home during the Christmas holiday's (six weeks) I might get around to investing a few hours to completing a few layouts using the new 'Simple Stories' range that I found at my local store. The range is very similar to what Project Life produce however there are a few differences I think. As Mr Opoes went to Europe prior to our meeting he has hundred's of photo's, maps, postcards, tickets and programs that he collected while he was away. These have been sitting in boxes ever since I've known him. Not long after we got married I attempted to place them in an album but I soon discovered that I seemed unable to match the photographs with the location notes that he'd made. So I'm hoping that I can create this manly scrapbooking album for him without it been too pretty, boring or PINK.

Wish me luck as I've already purchased a few things that I think might work and I'm hoping that they go with the pictures that he took some fifteen years ago.

Megan