Valentine's Party

I have given myself a challenge--to throw a SMALL Valentine's Day party for $50. I am keeping my fingers crossed that I can do it, but my husband is betting against me. The nerve!

So, over the next month I am going to show you how I am going to prove the Hubs wrong. Fifty bucks, and not a cent over!

I started out by deciding that this party has to be small. We can't invite everyone, as much as I really, really want to. I told each kid that they can invite three of their friends. This party is going to be on a Friday afternoon, so that already limits who can come. After much deliberation, each kid chose three of their friends.

Next up, I designed my own invites and made them pretty simple. I needed them to be free, so I used clipart and backgrounds that I already had. I came up with two different invitations and let the kids choose which one they wanted to give out. I printed these out on white cardstock and am sticking them in pink envelopes that I had left over from Emma's birth announcement three years ago--see it pays off to be a packrat!

I wanted our party to be sort of like a playdate with friends, so I came up with two fun activities--cookie decorating and painting on canvas, hence the wording on the invites. I'll give you more details about the activities later.

Here are the two invites I created in Photoshop. If you want a copy of them, leave your email address in the comments below and I will send them to you! I blurred out my address and phone number, obviously!