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Flip Flop Fiestas ~ Invitations

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Now that you’ve come up with your theme, it’s time to get your guest list together and decide how you’re going to get the word out.

Part 2 ~ Invitations

If you want to go the FREE route, you can use evite or punchbowl which have lots of cute templates. If you are trying to be more {green}, this is also a good avenue!

I prefer to make my own simple invites using inexpensive note cards or card stock. I like to print them on our home printer for a {professional} look. I have paid A LOT for invites in the past, but think all that money can be used elsewhere.

I start by looking for blank notecards in the dollar bins at Target or Michael’s. I’ve also found them at TJ Maxx and Marshall’s. If the cards are too plain, you can pick up some stickers that tie into the theme {of course!} to embellish them.

I also like to download a font or two for the invites that I use throughout the party for any signs, menus or goodie bag tags that I print up. This ties everything together. We have a Mac and there are several sites out there with FREE font downloads. For example, for Holden’s {Under The Sea} 1st birthday, I used a font with little bubbles {cocktail bubbly} which turned out pretty cute:

{please pardon the bad scan}

You can see a few other invites I’ve done here, here & here.

First, I just measure the note card {opened} or card stock and plug the dimensions into my Word program under format —> page. Then I write up the wording on the bottom half of the page {below the fold for a note card}, spell check a million times and then feed the note cards into the printer. Always do a test page first to make sure everything is lined up and looks centered. I am really anal about this part!

I am super cheesy and come up with all sorts of goofy rhymes and verbiage pertaining to the theme when writing up the invitation, too. Let your imagination run wild…parties are supposed to be FUN!

If you’re inviting a small number of kids, you can pick up a little trinket and include it with the invite or attach the invite with a little ribbon or raffia.

If you’re having a slumber party, maybe include a little eye mask or for a spa party, possibly a little bottle of nail polish. Just a little something to get your guests even MORE excited about your party.

They say that you should limit the number of guests to the number of years old your child is. I think that is a great rule of thumb, but I tend to be one of those that like to invite {everyone}! I am from the {the more the merrier} school of thought. We’re still at the stage where the adults stay at the parties, too, which I love, but it will also be nice when the {drop-off} parties begin!

I prefer to hand deliver the invites, but sometimes it makes more sense to pop them in the mail. I always like to pick out some special stamps at the Post Office…I know OVERBOARD!

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OK, now you’ve sent out your invites and you need to start thinking about what your party is going to look like!

Coming up mañana, Part 3: Venue & Decor

Thrifty Thursday ~ Simple, Inexpensive, Homespun Birthday Invites

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I’ve mentioned this before…you can spend LOTS on invitations.

I refuse to do that anymore. Personally, I also refuse to use evite. I think evite is genius and I’m all for being more {green}, but I prefer and enjoy coming up with cheap, crafty invites for my kids’ birthday parties. I love the idea of a hand or snail mail delivered invitation. I guess I’m sort of old-fashioned that way…

This year for Holden’s party I found some blank note cards at Michael’s for 50¢ a pack {8 cards/package}. I chose these specifically because of the red envelopes ~ so much better than plain, boring white!

The cards had a small graphic printed on the bottom right corner so I just made a {flame} template out of cardboard, cut it out, traced several flames on some orange construction paper, cut those out, used Elmer’s glue and some red & gold glitter and voila! It covered the picture perfectly. I chose a font we already had {cracked}, formatted it, came up with the wording and popped them through our printer.

I picked up some fire truck stickers at Target for 99¢ in the scrapbook area and added one to the inside of the invite and also to the front of the envelopes.

I addressed them “Firefighter so-and-so” and put the return address for the ones I mailed as “Fire Chief Holden”.

I calculated the cost of these invitations as less than 25¢ apiece.

We hand delivered most of them to save on postage, too!

Birthday Invites ~ 5 cents each!

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For Elliott’s 1st Birthday we spent almost $80 on her invitations! Eighty Dollars! Wow…..that was ridiculous! I ordered them from Polka Dot Design and had THEM print them off for me! Duh! Never again!

For her 2nd birthday I ordered the invites from Polka Dot Design again, but printed them my damn self! Still, I spent too much.

I vowed never to do that again and just make them myself based on the party theme. BIG SAVINGS and fun too!

Holden is turing 3 next month and I’ve been on the hunt for some cheapo blank note cards that I can feed into our printer. Voila! At Michael’s I found a couple packages in the $1 section that were marked down to 3/$1 – 33 cents each for 8 cards! With my 20% off coupon, I got them for 26 cents a pack!

I picked up some outer space stickers ($1 bin @ Target) to go with the theme for embellishing the inside, wrote up the wording, formatted it, downloaded a few free fonts, and printed them off. Seriously, I will never buy fancy schmancy invites again.

Here’s the front of the cards:

No, they’re not very outer spacey, but I liked that they were blue…going with blue & silver color scheme.

Here are the envelopes that I doctored up with some rubber stamps:

Easy peasy!

Here is the inside of the invite:

It’ll cost me over 7 times more to mail them than it did to make them!