Feeling like such an IM!
I've been organising my daughter's 4th birthday party - it's her first actual big birthday party since we've always just done a family bbq at home. She started preschool 4days/wk this term so I thought a party at a play centre would be good - easy to invite the class, not have hassles with food and I figure it would be good for parents to just sit and have a coffee & chat.
So I grabbed the party invites that the centre gave us. The blasted things are printed on some shiney bright pink paper that no pen will write on. I know, I went through every pen in the house. Ended up using a permanent marker and trying really hard to write the names instead of black blobs. Of course I don't know all the kid's names but I had the list of names from the sign-in sheet. So I'm diligently shoving the invites in each kids pocket this morning and find a lovely green envelope in my daughters. Beautiful hand-written name on the envelope, cute space-ship sticker on the back, open it up to find an adorable rocket shaped invitation card that pens were obviously made for - the party is at the same centre a week after my daughter's. And so I'm looking at all these lovely green envelopes sticking out of the pockets and notice there are a lot of names that I didn't see on the sign-in sheet. I didn't realise there was a second page of names so I've forgotten half a dozen kids. So I'm writing out the names I've forgotten, using a felt pen that doesn't quite work (I accidentally picked it up on the way out the door thinking it was the permanent marker). For a brief moment I thought about running down to Office Works and getting some nicer invitations and envelopes. But then I thought "f*ck it". I'm inviting people because I genuinely want the kids to have fun, play, eat cake and us mums (and dads/grandparents) can just sit back and chill. The kids aren't really going to care about the crappy invites? I'm just laughing at myself while I write this. Yay for being an IM!
3 Replies
Yay, and next time save yourself some heartache and talk to your child's carers/teachers about who she actually spends time with and just invite them :) much less work and usually more fun :)
I know the stress too well, just finished up with my daughter's 5th party. Her first real big party as she has started kindy and we had it at home.... Next year off to a child friendly venue I think!
Haha for my first daughter's birthday I wanted to make those cute little invites, I started, got stressed and thought "screw it!", then just printed some. Maybe when they're older and can help we'll do cool little invites but until then they're getting store bought ones or ones fully printed! Good on you for caring about the bigger picture and not stressing over the small stuff! :)