This Is What You Call OCD - A Tutorial To Drive Yourself Nuts AKA Xander's Invitations

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Xander's Invitations:

So let's just begin by saying I do this to myself EVERY year! I have these huge ideas for Xander's birthday party and then question my sanity while preparing for it. TThe first year was "Hey!! How cool would it be to have the entire ceilings of my house covered in Yo Gabba Gabba colored balloons?" Uhhhh why didn't anyone tell me that blowing up balloons the night before would mean balloons on my entire floor not the ceiling? Or what about the THREE, yes THREE, birthday cakes that I made shaped as Muno, Brobee, and DJ Lance. Last year, well that was another nightmare. Poor Xander. We will get into that another time. But let's just say I didn;t learn my lesson the first year and decided to make every kid tshirts. Again CRAZYYYYY. SO let's get back to this year! So we all know we are doing a pirate theme, and I get this great idea (not) to do a message in a bottle. Cute right? Well I couldn't stop there How about the message in a bottle is housed in a treasure chest. Oh wait that's too boring right? How about a message in a bottle housed in a treasure chest with pirate garb and trinkets?!?! As if the message in a bottle wasn't cute enough.

So I ordered really cute invites from PartyTimeFun on Etsy
http://www.etsy.com/shop/PartytimeFun

So this is where the OCD kicks in... I thought how cute would it be if the edges looked old and tattered? SO I took all the invites I printed out and decided to burn the edges.
KIDS DONT TRY THIS AT HOME!!

I also had to put an insert to have the parents RSVP with the amount of people attending and also to let me know all the kids shirt sizes, since you guessed it!! I am making shirts for allt he kids again. ( Can we say IDIOT)

So here is that OCD thing again... I thought to go with the theme of old and tattered why not make the paper distressed and tattered looking. How you ask?

Well I took a bowl of left over coffee and a paper towel and blotted a plain piece of paper with the coffee and let it dry

After you let it dry it will put it in the printer and print out whatever little message you want to leave. This is what it will look like

I then cut them with jagged edges to look like this

So I found a pirate themed message in a bottle kit at Oriental Trading
http://www.orientaltrading.com/
It came with the bottle, eyepatch, skull ring, stickers for the outside of the bottle and few items I didn't use like a blank invitation and sand (mom's you can thank me later)

I rolled the invitation and the insert up and tied it with thin brown twine and stuck it in the bottle

I then put together the treasure chest and the goodies. I also got these at Oriental Trading. They are meant to be favors but I used them as part of the invitation

So I stuck everything in the treasure chest and will box it up and ship out or for his classmates I used kraft paper gift bags and printed out their names in a Pirate font and attached the bags like so

So this ladies and gentlemen concludes my sucky tutorial or maybe my documentary of a crazy person you choose :o) Next will be some of the cool pirate gifts I got the little guy. Some from my beloved Etsy, some are not. Thanks for stopping by :o)