Princess Birthday Party - Part I

The next few posts will be about different elements of my daughter's fourth birthday party, as masterfully planned and executed by my wife. Like many four-year old girls, my daughter is very much into princesses. That made birthday and Christmas easy this year. Since Christmas is practically right on top of my daughter's birthday, my wife felt she wanted to do a little extra to make the birthday party special.

I don't think I've ever mentioned this before, but my wife and I both came from families of little means. Even though I've got a great job and work for an excellent company, we are still very frugal and budget religiously in order to put as much as possible into our savings. We save money by doing things ourselves instead of buying them or paying someone else to do them. Almost every single thing my wife did for the Princess Party she made herself.

Part I: Invitations

Rather than a typical rectangular invitation card, my wife cut stars out of cardstock, printed the party and RSVP information on the front and back, and connected them to wooden skewers to make little princess wands out of them. Here is the finished product:

I'm not sure how exactly she did the printing on these stars, but I've seen her send brown paper sacks through our printer, so this didn't surprise me one bit. The star is lined with pink glitter glue, and the bow on the handle was made from tulle (I had to look that spelling up, by the way...not how I expected tulle to be spelled) she had on hand from previous projects. 

Here's a closer look at the front of the wand. You can't read it all, but the strip of paper hanging down from the side is the RSVP information so parents could tear it off if they wanted to, before their own little princess took off with the wand in hand. 

This is the back of the wand. Princess party information, including dress code. :)