The Fashionista turns 10!

My first born turned 10 today, yes double digits! Those of you with children will know what I mean when I say the years have flown by.

I can clearly see her in my mind the day we brought her home from hospital, not quite a week old. She was so very tiny, like a wee doll, that she hardly fit in her car seat and had to wear premmie clothes. Her Daddy, very carefully carried her down to the car and then drove home so slowly that I thought we'd never get home. We stopped along the way, at a cafe, as I was dying for "real food" and before we knew it half the cafe was over poking their head into her capsule to see the tiny, little baby.

I don't have any of her baby pics on my lap top but here's one of her on her first birthday. I may be biased but she had beautiful eyes. Eldelry people used to comment on her eyes when we were out and she was terribly shy and used to really scowl at them ... I used to be so embarrassed.

These days she is a very smiley and friendly young lady. So very sociable and could talk the ears off a deaf man! These days I am more likely to ask her not to talk so much to the elderly people that we meet on our travels.

I love you my Little Princess.  We hope you enjoyed your special 10th party. xxxxx

Matryoshka Invitations

In our house, we do not give our children a big birthday party every year but simply celebrate what we consider to be special birthdays, IE their first birthdays, fifth, 10th (double digits), etc. Well this month the Fashionista turns 10 and so she is going to have a good old fashioned birthday party with lots of friends.

In her typical way she chose a theme that has been a little challenging, you see she loves Matryoshka dolls. You know those little Russian nesting dolls; she collects them. So I basically started scouring Trade Me (NZ's EBay) and E-Bay Aussie and Europe for whatever I could find in the way of Matryoshka party goods and let me tell you there was not a lot out there.  I bet there will be after the party ... does that happen to anyone else?

I ended up purchasing an expensive Matryoshka stamp set and stamped and water-painted and cut about 20 invites by hand!

The colours we were going to use were red, pink and blue based on some cupcake holders that I had sourced from Aussie but little Miss didn't like the strong colours for her invites so chose a very soft pink.  I placed some scrap booking paper down the centre of each card, FINALLY found some ribbon that nearly matched and hung our little Matryoshka paintings with the brad. They weren't exactly how we had planned them but we couldn't find a "You're Invited" stamp of all things and so we simply had to redesign and redesign until we were happy with them.

This is how they turned out ...

We printed the wording on white paper and stuck the inserts into the cards which looked pretty classy I thought.

Next job is to order a cake. I usually make them myself but with such a large group I don't want to place any extra stress on myself.

Thank You's and Gift Cards for the Mad Hatters Tea Party

When the guests leave the Mad Hatters Tea Party, in order to thank their guests for coming, the girls have prepared some wee gift boxes for them to take home with them.

We found some printables online at "Don't Eat the Paste" blog.
Link: http://www.donteatthepaste.com/2010/04/tea-or-favor-printable-boxes.html

We simply selected the design (there are a few to choose from and even another section with some Alice in Wonderland quotes, so we printed those too) and printed them onto some A4 card stock.

Cut the design out.

Because the oldest daughter takes forever to cut things perfectly and the younger one rushes (and therefore makes her own lines to cut along ...) after them each cutting one, I offered to cut the rest for them, which they readily agreed to. Otherwise I think they would even now, be cutting them out.

The girls then folded the cards into boxes and they did really well, I only needed to show them the first one and they were off. We used some double sided tape (like what you use in scrapbooking and card making) on the tabs to keep the boxes together.

On the day, so they remain fresh, we will fill each little box with four or five large lollies and place some curling ribbon around the boxes to keep the lollies secure inside.

Invitations to the Mad Hatters Tea party

Today the girls posted their invitations to their Mad Hatters Tea party. They have invited nine little homeschooled girls to the event which will take place on a Friday afternoon, just for a couple of hours.

These are the invitations that we designed and printed in different colours.

We all know how nice it is to get something in the mail, so despite two families having multiple invitees we made sure that each girl received their own personal invite in their own personal envelope addressed just to them. Thankfully those families live nearby so we popped their invites in their post boxes which saved the cost of stamps.

From what I understand each girl was overjoyed to receive something in the mail addressed just to them, which certainly makes that little extra effort worthwhile.

My girls meantime have learnt what to include on an invite, i.e., date, time, place, dress, RSVP etc. and where to place that on the inside. I even learnt something myself in regards to RSVPing. Apparently now it is acceptable to just put on the invites that unless you advise to the contrary it will be taken that you will be coming. I think I still prefer the old way where you receive confirmation or not. Also what if an invitation goes astray in the mail and you just assume they are coming?

I did laugh when a couple of the RSVP's were late, the girls were so anxious for me to follow the invitees up. I explained that you usually wait a day or two before following anyone up.

Because there are so many children with allergies and intolerance's, and some we haven't entertained before, I thought it prudent to add something about advising us on the back of the card, rather than them turning up and not being able to eat anything. Making gluten free, and such is not really too hard these days as long as one knows.

We have had a couple of girls respond with known allergies (pork products) so that's easy to accommodate. We are simply substituting ham and bacon with chicken in one of our recipes.

Thankfully most of the girls can attend, so my little hostess's are now at the next planning stage ... the activities. Let's hope there is no rain on the day!