Birthday Invitation Wrap Up

Occasionally (or rather literally when an occasion at home comes up), I would daydream of being a DIY Goddess. Think Martha Stewart. Really. But in reality, I do not even have 1% of her incredible skills. I struggle hard at every arts and crafts project that I embark on with my overeager little miss. But of course, since I have an enthusiastic student I always try my hardest to deliver my best. Although I tended to be very unlucky with raffles and lotteries, the kid and I often (as luck would have it) ended  with surprisingly nice looking projects. The Fates probably thought it wiser to gift me with the luck in this kind of things since they know how difficult it is to console disappointed kids.

So anyways, with the class birthday party in mind I thought of the great amount of joy I could bring to the kid if I DIY her birthday invites taking to mind all things enchanted and fairy-like. But as I brainstormed for hours, I just ended up mentally-drained and tired. And yet with nary an idea to start with. So I embraced defeat yet again. And decided it's time I called for back up. I am eternally grateful for cousins who are gifted with real (and not fake ones like mine) artistic talents who are also ever ready to take over from where I failed. 

So I say again, "Hello there, Ninong Jepoy!" and browse the internet for some generic fairy-themed invites and send the first thing that I see to my cousin to personalize for the kid. Here's what he came up with.

i had to blur out the party details. i wanted to link up the source of this photo but i cannot remember where i got it from. so my advance apologies. i really have no intention of claiming ownership over this design.

I wanted a very simple birthday invite BECAUSE I was very watchful of my budget and I didn't want to overspend as well. But I also didn't want to totally disregard the kid's wishes of seeing fairies and castles in it. So this is the best I can come up with. I swear, little miss, best effort na 'to ni Mommy (and mostly Ninong hehe). 

I had that printed as a 3R photo. Picture City over at ATC (I'm sure they have branches in other malls around the metro) has a 5+1 promo so we got about 6 pcs for free since we also had some of the kid's recent photos printed for our birthday card exchange project. So that costed me about P4.50/pc. Not bad at all. And I still have P5.50 left to spend for the envelope since I budgeted each invite at P10/pc.

I was thinking of something generic to get for the invite. I thought we'll just seal them with stickers for added color but when I was browsing through the available envelopes at National Bookstore, I couldn't find anything that would fit the invite. So I was looking around almost ready to just go with the next best thing when my eyes fell on this rack that houses coin envelopes. I grabbed a pack and measured it against the size of the invite and TA-DAHHHHH, we found our winner! 

So yes, I went with a coin envelope and a photo paper printed invite. So boring looking. So unappealing. But who cares. It passed my little girl's standards and it fit my budget. That's all that mattered really. 

When we got home, the little miss was so excited to start working on them so I got the invites out and she starting pulling the envelopes out of the package one by one. Lining them up and counting them over and over. 

"Mommy, huwag mo kakalimutan si N, si A and si C ha?!"

"Yes, ma'am birthday girl. I got them all covered!" (she giggled at my response and at the sight of her class list)

i hand wrote the names of her classmates on each card and
she sealed them with letter stickers depending on the first letter of her classmate's names

After we've finished inserting into the envelopes and sealing all 22 pieces of her birthday invites, she asked me to help her sort the invites according to the gender of the recipient. It turned out to be her way of checking if we missed somebody out. She kept insisting we missed 3 but I thought maybe the other kids were using nicknames in school that's why they weren't on the list that Teacher J confirmed to me. But the daddy was telling me, he trusts his daughter's memory. So the following day, I sent Teacher J a note to re-confirm the list and guess what -- the kid was right all along. Teacher J did miss to add 3 more to my list. Good job kiddo for double checking!

So we've sent out the invites. The kid is soooo ready to party. But I have yet to finalize everything. I don't know yet where we'd get the food. Or if we'll have banners and balloons. I'll go by my instinct. We'll go by whatever would work best for us that day. I'm excited to see though the kid's reaction when they see Kraze Kitch's Rainbow Cake. (because the cake was a big hit from last year's party we're reordering again this year) I hope I can find nice garden/enchanted/fairy themed toppers for that.

By the way, I spent less than P150 for 25 invitations. Do I get a good job, Mommy cheers as well?

4th Birthday Preps + Divi Finds

I have been planning to go to Divisoria for weeks now but most of our weekends have been packed I didn't know when to squeeze that in. Today (thankfully but sadly) our playdate with our Fun Farm tropa got postponed so I grabbed the opportunity and dragged the reluctant hubby to go hunting for giveaways at the bargain shopping capital of the Philippines in the hopes that I can finally cross this task out in my to-do list for the kid's upcoming birthday.

After the kid's first birthday, I immediately shelved the idea of ever throwing 'big', organized parties. I decided that from age 2 onwards we are going for intimate, backyard (or in our case - home garden) parties instead. I don't think the kid had any issues with that anyways. To her, what makes for an awesome birthday party are the cake, scoops of ice cream in cones and the presence of her neighborhood friends. 

However, since her school allows students to celebrate parties with the entire class, new expectations were set. She now expects a celebration in school. And a themed one just to add a little complication to what to me is already tasking to do. Party planning stresses me out. Although I would really love to see my kid happy, it isn't something I enjoy doing. But well, like most mothers, I do it anyway. 

I still aimed to keep it simple. Our menu would be baked macaroni and chicken lollipop, a small cake for 23 kids to share and a gallon of mango (it has to be yellow because that's her favorite color) ice cream and 2 dozen cones to complete the kid's wishes. She also asked for a fairy themed party and that was to be covered by the invitation. For the remaining part of the party, she would just have to content herself with what Mommy's invisible party planning skills (and with very limited budget to boot) were able to pull off. Again, I'm almost sure she wouldn't mind. 

Given my expected failure on the event itself, I thought maybe I could still claim some redemption by labouring over the party giveaways. As I've mentioned here, I was never fond of giving away sweets and pre-packaged Disney character school supply sets (no offense to those who do. my kid likes them so much and even begs for us to giveaway Tinkerbell pencil cases but this is more of me trying to teach my kid to be unattached to certain things). But I couldn't do away with the giveaways either because for one - I do not want to disappoint the kids. I thought I could still go far with a budget of P50/kid, I just need to find the right things to put in there. I don't know what those are but what I was very sure I wanted was for them to be reusable and earth-friendly if the budget permits. 

Since my initial plan of giving away plants is logistically impossible. I thought of giving away a garden kit instead. I thought of giving the kids packet of seeds to plant inside burlap sacks that I saw at the Party Starters Facebook page with would be really nice (and pretty). But when I browsed through the price list however, it sadly was way over my budget already. So I was left with what seemed to be my final option and that is to scour Tabora St at Divisoria instead. I thought it was going to be easy finding ready made burlap pouches there but I apparently thought wrong. The 2 shops that we found to be selling burlap cloth told us they were available but had to be ordered. I didn't have luxury of time to place the order and come back for the items so even if it broke my heart, I had to let the idea go. The pouch price was still steep for my budget anyways so I just took that as a sign. It wasn't meant to be.  

While we were walking and thinking, both the hubby and I paused and pointed at these: 

cute buri bags selling for P15-P18

Mini-bayongs for the kids! These will be great for role-playing too! 

So the hubby and I bought 2 dozens of these and headed back to Anding's where we found prospective loot bag fillers. We were eyeing educational, wooden puzzles to give to the kids. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough stocks for our first choice so we bought these instead:

not sure how earth-friendly these are but when I saw the shapes,
i thought the kids could learn from this

Anding's is a bargain toy haven. And thanks to Maqui for recommending we check this shop out. This saved us a lot of time since we are still amateurs at Divi shopping.

where to find Anding's

We also bought other wooden puzzles to give away to the kid's neighborhood friends who recently celebrated their birthdays. Feeling galante but really the toys weren't expensive at all so I didn't have issues getting approval from our boss chief (aka daddy, man of the house).

We spent about 2 hours walking around Tabora and Ilaya Sts. Had we left the house a little earlier, we would have had an extra hour to check out 168 but I also wanted to stick to my budget and buy what was just needed so I readily agreed when the hubby suggested we head home by 11:30. Fruits are cheap at this time of the month in divi and we were also able to score this pair of fairy wings for P90. This now completes the kid's costume for Halloween/trick or treat.

It has been one long tiring day for the hubby and me having spent more time traveling than shopping but still I'm glad I was able to achieve my goal for today. Kid excitedly packed each of the lootbags/giveways this afternoon and she's now even more looking forward to her birthday celebration in school.