Coutdown: T minus 5

Okay...so I have been blogging about this for over a month because it has completely consumed my life! For those of you tired of reading about it, don't worry it's almost over....we have 5 more days. For those of you totally excited about it (even tho you won't be able to attend)...WE ONLY HAVE 5 MORE DAYS!!! So the place is booked, the invites are out, the balloons are ordered, the cake is being made, the party supplies are bought, and the kids are responding!!!

RSVP's:
So far we have 20 kids who have RSVP'd. I expect about 10 more by the end of the week. Tonight I finally got an RSVP from a kid in Kaeden's class. So far we have had almost everyone from Lauren's class and kids from the 'hood. I was getting worried because nobody was calling from Kaeden's class, but we finally heard from someone!

THE CONFLICT:
So last week, LT received a birthday party invite from her two favorite boy-friends. They are twins, Ethan and Drew. She and her best friend Jada were kinda like a clique with these two boys. Well, LT was the first to move up to the preschool classroom and so they have sorta broken up the clique. Well anyways, they are having a birthday party too...ON THE SAME DAY!!! Yes, that's right they are all having parties on the same day. So we are attending two parties that day...the twins and ours. So it's going to be a party kinda day :)

BAG FULL O CRAP:
I have been stressing over the goodie bags. I am contemplating what route to take...bag full-o-crap, something useful, or homemade sugar cookies. For those of you who have never attended a kids birthday party, everyone gets a bag full of crap at the end of the party to say thanks for attending. Usually this bag is full of crappy candy and crappy dollar store toys. I am always turned off by the bag full o crap because I have to fight Lauren off the candy, unwillingly apply the temporary tattoo, and watch the toys to make sure Kaeden doesn't choke on them.

I thought about getting something useful like gift cards to Baskin Robbins Ice Cream or McDonalds, some kinda of toy, or a book. Lauren attended this birthday party not too long ago that was themed around pink cupcakes! It was such a cute party. At the end of the party, they gave out these presents wrapped in pink paper. When we got home and opened it up, it was the cutest book called Pinkalicious. It was about a girl who ate too many cupcakes and turned pink! It was the best present because we read this book almost every night before bed. I want to get a cute gift like that!!

Finally, I thought of making some monkey sugar cookies. This has turned out to be harder than I thought. First, I don't have a righteous sugar cookie recipe. My friend has been sending me several recipes, but I have already gone through three and haven't been impressed with my baking. I have FINALLY come to the conclusion that my Organic flour may be the culprit. I am starting over with normal all-purpose flour tomorrow. Even if I do get a perfect recipe, my decorating skills are lame to say the least. So I am not sure if I can even pull off monkey faces!! So one or the other has to be awesome! If the cookies are cute, but taste like crap...well, at least they look cute. On the other hand, if they taste fantastic, but don't look perfect...at least they taste good right???

I am just not sure how much work I want to put into it. In the end, I understand why we get that damn bag of crap. It's easy to put together and it's cheaper than any of the other options!!!! I am probably making gifts for 30 kids, so I have to consider price and time.

It's finally on....

I have been extremely busy at work and haven't had a chance to blog about the roadmap for the big party! Phase one...complete. The invitations have been made and passed out...so we are officially having a party folks!

I was going to have some invites made online and mailed to me, but I couldn't find anything I really like cuz they were all lame...and they were too expensive. So I decided, yet again, to do it myself! I am so crafty--or think I am--or pretend!

Staying with the mod monkey theme weI picked out for the party (thanks to your votes....where have the rest of you been...I think I am only getting votes from kimmie and viv. I might have to plug my blog on IM again!!! Wake up people!!)...anyways, staying with the mod monkey theme I blew up a giant 5x7 version of the monkey face. Went to Hobby Lobby (I know you're jealous Kimmie!) and bought some thick cardstock scrapbooking paper, got some envelopes, grabbed some glue and GOOGLY eyes and I was out the door! Total Cost about 25 bucks.

I knew this was going to be a long project because I couldn't just sit down and knock out 25 invitations on the fly. I had a month and I decided it was safe to do it in small increments...I gotta work people! And boy have I been busy with work....so good thing I got a head start on all this.

I started out with some monkey heads, then monkey faces, monkey lips, monkey ears, and then I printed out the actual invite. It took me FOREVER to come up with a catch rhyme for the invite. Printed out the invites on some white cardstock I already had (score! freebie) and cut them into the shape of monkey heads.





I wasn't sure what I was going to do for the eyes and nose because cutting out the mod monkey eyes and nose was going to be difficult. So I opted for googly eyes and hole-punched some black cardstock for the nose. And viola (or as I used to say whala)...my invites. I think they turned out pretty cute!

For the envelopes, I used the last blog picture of the BFF Monkey and Banana picture! It's so cute and couldn't resist!