Quickie....Had to Share a Sneak Peak

Last weekend, I spent part of Saturday creating Boston's invitations from scratch.  Like literally I had a blank page in front of me on my computer.  After a few hours of thinking, researching and creating, I have to say that I'm so stinking excited to send them out to people now!!!  

I'm so excited that I wanted to share just a teensy sneak peak real quick with you all (I even had a boat load of instagram pictures ready to post today, but that's getting delayed for now!).

Once they are all complete and ready to be mailed, you know I'll be sharing the 411 on how I made them, how they were packaged and everything in between.

Anyway, here she blows....a little preview.

Yes'm, he's having an airplane themed birthday party this year!  :)

Oh and if you wanna see how I made his circus invitations last year, you can see them here and here.

Happy Friday and Happy Weekend!!

P.S.  One more thing - be sure to come back tomorrow to see a little 1-hour project I also did over the weekend for our dining room.  It was easy, cute and only cost 3 buckaroos.

Invitations: Part 2

So, it's been over a month and a half since Boston's 1st birthday party and I still haven't shared the rest of my invitation making.  You can read about the packaging of the invitations here.

Around the beginning of August I started designing and buying my material I needed to use to make his invitations.  I knew that I wanted to make them so that they were made with extra "love."  :)  And I knew I wanted something different!  I searched the web and found several invitations that I liked and decided to combine what I liked about them all and created my own concoction.  This is what it looked like when you opened the box.

Boston's 1st Birthday!

Unfortunately I didn't take many pictures of the actual "invitation making" part but basically I used a huge piece of red shimmery card stock for the outside which I got from Paper Planet in Fort Worth...LOVE this place. Every time I go in there it makes me want to make all kinds of stuff. Just for fun. You know, in my spare time.  I'm weird like that. I also got my turqouise envelopes for my RSVP cards from paper planet. I got lucky since they ended up being the exact same size as the pocket that's holding the rsvp and the fun facts cards.

When you opened up the invitation here's what it looked like inside:

The elephant was one of my favorite parts of the invitation.  I loved it so much I included it on other decor for his party.  

(and yes, I made a grammar mistake on the invitation that Jer noticed after they were all done and in their boxes!  can you guess what the mistake is?)  :-)

In the pockets are the RSVP's and the Fun Facts About Boston.

I knew that I wanted a more...I guess you could say, "formal" rsvp. So I made the rsvp's using MS Word. In fact, I made everything using MS Word. I love Word, it's so simple. Then I had seen an invitation (can not remember for the life of me where and unfortunately it was before I joined Pinterest) that had a fun facts page in it. I thought that was the cutest idea for people who don't get to see Boston often and don't know fun facts about him. :)

the return envelope was addressed to Boston Cook. :)

the back of the envelope had Boston's address as well

Boston's Fun Facts

Despite it being A LOT of work, I had an absolute blast making these invitations for our main guy's birthday party.  Can't wait till his next party! 

Since it's a busy week for me due to Thanksgiving, check back next week for all things "Party."  Yup - I'll be blogging about all of the in's and out's of Boston's 1st Birthday Party!  :-)

~Jeni

Invitations: Part 1

First things first, I've been very very neglectful.  Like majorly neglectful.  Like seriously MIA.  But soon that will change.  For the thousand-th time, I've been focusing on B's party among other things such as trees, fence, pillows and oh...some art work.  All of which will be coming very soon.  As in within the next week.  Something about having an almost one year old and finding time to upload pictures has been quite the challenge for me to do lately.  But have no fear, they WILL be here... and soon!

This invitations are out-tha-door and it's time to parrrtayyy!!!  Come One, Come All!

You guessed it - we mailed them in white jewelry boxes.  The same ones that we mailed our wedding invitations in.  They are from FetPak.com.  They come with a cotton liner that you lay your jewelry invitations on for extra padding/support.

I sealed them with red and white striped wrapping paper so that I didn't have to tape the 4 sides of the box shut.  It worked out perfectly with the theme.

You guessed right again...it's a Circus Theme!  You guys are so smart.  :-)

Here's a close up of our address labels that I made using MS Word and shipping labels that are big enough for both the return address and shipping address.  (you can see where i blurred out our address for the return portion)

On the labels I also included a circus tent and a circus elephant which will be a common occurrence at the parrtaayyy (yes, I love saying that word like a southern/wild party girl).

As for the postage, I went to the post office and got one box with the invitation weighed so that I knew how much postage I would need to order.  My plans were to have them custom ordered instead of using regular ol' stamps that the post office gives you.  Instead, I wanted to keep the theme going.  The USPS told me that they would cost $1.88 to mail.  So I went to Zazzle.com and ordered my stamps.

Zazzle didn't give me an option to put in my amount so I had to choose from their preset amounts.  So I put $1.48 and $.44 together using two stamps.  These are the ones I chose: (Notice on this stamp that I didn't edit correctly?  The "is turning" should have been scooted to the left a bit.  Bummer.)

We sent out a total of 38 invitations last week.  We were surprised that our invitees got the invitations less than 24 hours after dropping them in the mail.  Thanks, USPS.

Let the fun times and memories begin!

~Jeni

Dedicating Boston to the Lord

After nine months, we thought it was way past time that we dedicated our son to the Lord.  So we've decided to do that on August 14th!  We are super duper to the 10th power excited.  We are Jesus-loving-peeps and we know Boston will be too. 

This past weekend I worked on his invitations.  Noooo, I didn't order them, I made them. :)  I love making invitations.  I even made our wedding invitations.  And it was fun. 

So for Boston's invitations I knew I wanted to make them and I also knew I wanted something simple but a little boy-ish and religious so this is what I came up with. 

I made them out of gray and white cardstock, typed out the wording on MS Word and used baby blue ribbon to add a little accessory to them.  They were easy peasy to make and didn't take long at all.  Now on to the planning of the celebration lunch afterward.  This week, I'm be working on all of the organizing.  This is a big day for our family and for our sweet son so I want to have it all prepared ahead of time.  :)

After the dedication, it's FULL ON BIRTHDAY PLANNING!  Woot woot. 

~Jeni