First of all, the Facebook thing is a hoot. How fun to see all of you there! I really appreciate you "liking" penny carnival. If you're not into Facebook, no worries. You won't miss a beat just by following along here like normal. I appreciate and am humbled by that, too.
With Bo's fifth birthday party coming up in a few weeks, I figured I'd better send the invitations.
Just to refresh your memory (and mine, since the kid changed her mind so many times), the birthday theme is: Sleeping Beauty Goes Camping. I'm doing my best to marry the two ideas. A few weeks ago, I showed you the dress I sewed her for the party. And before that, I listed some ideas for the bash, although I think that was back when it was Barbie Goes Camping, not Sleeping Beauty.
The original plan for the invites was to set up a scene with Barbie holding a fishing pole and a can of beer soda near a miniature tent, take a picture and use that as the card. With the change to Sleeping Beauty, that would have required me buying Barbie Doll No. 2 (one with a Sleeping Beauty dress), and I'm just not ready for that yet.
Anyhow, I went with tents instead:
I wanted it to have a Cath Kidston feel to it. I love her camping stuff.
The print isn't from Cath Kidston, though. I took a scrap of fabric from my stash--just a flannel from Jo-Ann's I used around Valentine's Day--scanned it into my computer and printed it out at Kinko's.
I did the same thing to make the envelopes, but using the kitschy camping fabric ("Happy Campers" by American Jane for Moda) I had from the party dress I sewed.
I'm planning on posting a template for making custom envelopes on my About.com kids' parties site soon, but in a nutshell--just dissect an envelope you already have, lay it flat and trace its shape on any paper you like (even old magazine or book pages) and then fold and glue it into place).
And here's Aurora herself, toasting a marshmallow (I took the liberty of adding that to a coloring book image):
Sorry for smudging out some of the details. I dislike creeps showing up at my house.
I created a place on the kids' parties site where readers can submit pictures of party invitations they've made, so head on over there, if you like, and show off your stuff.
And while I'm on the topic of paper projects, I never posted the Father's Day gift we gave J this year. He doesn't like to get anything fancy, so we made him a camping cookbook of outdoor recipes that we printed off the web and, ahem, illustrated:
(Yes, a cannoli. You mean you camp without cannoli? OK, we've never brought cannoli on a camping trip, but Bo insisted on including it in the book.)
I would be happy to give my husband "real" gifts on his birthday and Father's Day, but the fact that he'd prefer things like this makes me love him even more.