Party Time

It's nearly time for our annual end-of-summer party!

Next week we will host our 3rd annual End-of-Summer party. It started as a way to get the kids int he neighborhood back together before school started, but now it's just good old fun! This year, we are doing a pirate theme, which I am so excited about doing!

Today, I made the invitations. Our guest list is small (only 7 kids - plus my 3 - but we only needed 4 invitations due to groups of siblings).

First, I tore the edges off of some old linen resume paper I had. Then I made some tea (4 c. boiling water plus 8 tea bags) and let it cool. I gently crumpled the paper and dipped it in the tea (I think I dipped it about 3 times). Very carefully, I opened the paper and let it dry on our patio table (this took less than an hour to dry!).

I then used a super-fine Sharpie to write the party information on each piece of paper.

I rolled each invitation up scroll-style and tied it with a small piece of raffia.

We then cleaned and dried some empty water bottles and slid the invitations into the bottle. I used scraps of the tea-dyed paper to make labels and then tied a raffia bow on the front of the bottle.

Since I had all of these materials at home, the cost for these invitations was $00000!

We'll be hand-delivering these invitations tomorrow, and then I will dive into the rest of the plans. More to come....