Isabella’s Third Birthday party preparation: Background and Invitations

Why is there so much pressure to put on a ridiculously awesome birthday party for the child who isn’t even old enough to remember? In 10 years, my daughter isn’t going to remember that I spent HOURS putting together a ‘Happy Birthday Isabella’ banner out of Minnie Mouse heads and hand cut out letters. But I feel like I must do it. I don’t know why – it’s just something that I feel like I need to do it. And based on all of the over the top parties that I have seen on Pinterest, I definitely am not the only one.

Which brings us to this year. Isabella will be 3. Uhh when did that happen? Wasn’t she just born yesterday? I am going to avoid getting all sentimental because it’s too late in the day to start crying, but let’s just say that I remember bringing her home from the hospital like it was yesterday and now she talks more than I ever expected at 2.5 and is one of the lights of my life. I digress… She will be 3 on October 15th. When asked what kind of birthday party she wanted this year she said Hello Kitty. I think that I am the only one on Earth who hates Hello Kitty based on how much merchandise is currently on the market. I asked her what colors, because there are like 9 million different variations of Hello Kitty and she said rainbow. Awesome.

This actually has worked out better for me because I can now make it a rainbow birthday party with Hello Kitty as a side note. I decided to borrow a similar color scheme from one of the Hello Kitty birthday sets out on the market and replace the red in a standard rainbow with a hot pink and I think that it came out great. One of my secret excitements is using Paint to design things that I would like, i.e. invitations, thank you cards, banners, etc. I have been doing this for years and it really helps me to decide what I want beforehand so I know that I will be happy with the finished product. I scoured http://www.etsy.com for inspiration with other people’s invitations and party sets and found a few that I thought were neat but nothing that really struck my fancy. I did end up taking a few items from several of them and combining them all together into one invitation that looks like this:

I will add some cute wording and a picture of Isabella that will be taken sometime over the next few weeks, but on the whole the product is pretty much complete. I have plans for multiple posts re: preparations for the party, pictures of the party, etc. Any inspiration for Silas’s birthday would be greatly appreciated. I haven’t found a lot of cute boy stuff but I would like to have an idea about what I would like to focus on. 

-Sara