New Website is Live!

Oh boy, I am seriously having doubts about publishing this here!  But I figure if I keep trying to get it just right before I move forward, I will end up going in circles for a long time.  So here goes:  I published a website for my new business!  I'm not ready to sell things yet, but at least now I have a web presence!  Here it is!

www.chikuchikupdx.com

It is completely a work-in-progress--first up is replacing the photos with the newer version of my product--but I'd love to hear from you about which things should stay, what I need to add, and what stuff can go!  Eventually there will be a shop page where I plan to sell the product in limited edition prints, and a "where to buy" page once I have retailers.

By the way, this is my product--a portable art kit featuring the fabrics I fell in love with while living in Japan last year.



We used these things non-stop in Tokyo, while trying to keep my gaijin children in line without handing them the phone or iPad!  On the train, in a restaurant, the doctor's waiting room...seriously, they were a lifesaver!  But maybe my favorite part is that I just had to grab one item on my way out the door and I knew my kids would be entertained wherever we ended up.   Seriously, getting out the door takes long enough--I don't need one more thing to think about!

I'm taking a branding class right now, and many of the students are the same women who were in my marketing class last term.  At last night's class, a couple of these awesome ladies called me out, asking me why the heck I was sitting around asking questions when I should be out selling my product.  Their confidence in me and what I have to offer really woke me up--I know I have been dragging my feet because I don't feel like I know what to do as far as running a business goes, but the fact is I won't know what all is involved until I'm doing it.  So rather than stick in the safe zone of sewing more sample product,  I am trying to take their advice and jump in--I sent an inquiry to a manufacturer today, and published my website--two huge steps!

I'll post progress over here when it seems relevant, and oh, I guess I should put a link to my new site in my sidebar!

By the way, if you're wondering where the name Chiku Chiku came from, you can find the whole story on the "My Story" page of my new website!

Printable Doll Kimono Pattern and Tutorial!

I finally gathered enough nerve to go into the shop near my neighborhood where they alter and sell vintage kimonos and yukatas, and spit out some vocabulary words about cut fabric accompanied with mime ask about purchasing some fabric scraps from them.  Amazingly enough, I was successful, and now I have a bag of vintage kimono scraps to play with!

One way I KNEW I would use the scraps was by making doll clothes.  Little Sister's doll play has reached a stage where getting the dolls dressed (several times) is every bit as important as the make-believe that happens afterwards, and I am looking forward to building the doll wardrobes beyond the Disney princess costumes they all came in.  So since I had kimono scraps, what better to make than kimonos!

I figured that since a doll kimono is a fairly simple shape and construction that there would be a tutorial or pattern out there that I could follow, but there was actually surprisingly little that I could find online.  So cobbling together a few things I found, I created a printable pattern that I decided to share with you!

Now, I have never shared a printable before, so please give me feedback if this link doesn't work for you.  I made it all fit on one sheet, and I included a box for scale, so make sure that you print at 100% (I am using A4 paper instead of letter size, but A4 is bigger so as long as you use 100% scale everything should fit just fine!)

It will look like the pic below, and the link to the printable is in the caption!

Print the pattern here!

Ok, so on to the tutorial.  Here goes!  It's been a while since I've done a full tutorial so let me know if you've got any questions.

1.  Print your pattern and tape pieces together.  They should look like this:

2.  Lay out your pattern pieces on the fabric.  The kimono can be cut out of a piece of fabric as small as 7" by 30" (or 13" by 20", depending on how you cut your pieces out).  Here's how I laid mine out:

Note that the body pieces are NOT cut on the fold, they are two separate pieces.  And I cut out both sleeves at once by doubling the fabric over at one end and cutting both on the fold at once.

You will cut out two of the long body pieces as mirror images, and two sleeves, cut on the fold.  Your cut pieces will look like this:

Note--I rounded the neckline out in the final pattern so yours will look a tiny bit different.

3.  Lay the two body pieces right side together and sew the back bodice pieces together from hem to neckline, then press open.

Hmm, those pins are pretty hard to see.  If you squint, you'll see them on the bottom right edge of the fabric here, they go from neckline to back hem.

The back body of the kimono (wrong side, obviously)

4.  Fold the front body panels over to line up the hems, then press a sharp line at the shoulder.  Also press a nice line into your sleeves while you're at it.

5.  Lay the body panel out, right side up.  Take your first sleeve and lay it right side down on top of the body panel so that the pressed line on the sleeve matches up with the pressed line at the shoulder, and with the straight edge of the sleeve along the outside edge of the kimono body.

6.  Pin the pressed lines together, then pin 1.5 inches away from the center line on either side.  Sew the sleeve onto the body ONLY on these three inches in the middle. Then do the same with the other sleeve.

7.  Press the seam open where the sleeve joins the body, then press the rest of the straight edge of the sleeve over to match that seam allowance (so you should have 1/4 inch or so pressed over the full length of the sleeve).  Press the other edge of the sleeve (between the two curved corners) over as well as shown below.

8.  Sew the folded edge down that is closest to the body of the kimono--the straight edge where the sleeve is attached in the middle.  There will be an opening at the armpit like in a real kimono, so you want those open edges to be finished.

9.  On the outer edge of the sleeve (the one with curved corners), turn the middle 3 inches over a second time and hem in place.  This will be your wrist opening, so it needs to be finished.

Hem the area between the two pins (should roughly line up with the 3 inches sewn at the shoulder)

 10.  Now fold the sleeve in half, right sides together.  Sew together starting about an inch from where the sleeve joins the body of the kimono, around the bottom of the sleeve, and stopping at the finished wrist opening.

Pinned

Sewn

 11.  Now pin the side of the kimono with the finished sleeve.  Pin all the way from the armpit to the hem and sew closed.

I found it easiest to start sewing at the hem and end at the armpit.

 12.  Make sure you have completed all of these steps for both sleeves and sides of the kimono--it should look like this:

13.  Trim the corners on the sleeve seam allowances carefully, then turn the kimono right-side-out and press.

14.  Hem the bottom of the robe, like so:

15.  Now attach bias tape all the way around the opening, starting at the hem on one side and going all the way around.  I used single fold bias tape and folded it in half to get a thinner double-folded tape look.

16.  Once the bias tape is on, give it a final press and the kimono itself is done!

17.  Now you just need an obi/belt.  For mine, I just cut a piece of foldover elastic to 4.25 inches and sewed it together in the back.  It has to be pulled up over the doll's feet.  But you could also use a piece of ribbon and add velcro, or a snap. Also, real obi are very elaborate so you could have a lot of fun making a more authentic one!  But for my purposes the elastic worked very well.

Here are a couple of my earlier tries--I adapted the pattern several times along the way and am really happy with the way the final pattern came out.

Take 1

Take 2

I do have some sad news though-- I was making my 4th kimono, the thin fabric got caught in the machine and pulled the thing that catches the bobbin thread (hook timer? I can't remember) out of whack.  After watching a few youtube videos I was confident that I could fix it myself, but after removing every visible screw on my machine and still not being able to get the case off, I gave up and brought it to a sewing machine repair shop in Shinjuku, where thankfully the guy spoke enough English to understand my problem.  Well, that and he had eyes, and the problem is pretty obvious, so all was well.  But being without my machine for 3 days has been brutal!  I was on a roll with working on gifts, and now it's all on hold since I have a friend visiting (HOORAY!!!!  Picking her up in an hour!) and I know I'd rather hang out with her and show off Tokyo than sit in front of my sewing machine while she's here.  But I hate paying $85 to fix a 6-month-old machine that only cost $250 in the first place.  I don't even want to try to figure out the warrantee, since it's in Japanese and I don't want to send the machine out somewhere and get it back who-knows-when, but I am starting to think I should have invested in a better machine.  I didn't know how much sewing I would be doing when I picked out the one I have!  We'll see if this one ends up lasting me the rest of my time here, or if I end up upgrading after all!

The DIY Frozen Birthday

Honestly, this year with our preparations to move overseas, I was so ready to go buy licensed merchandise for a birthday party and call it a day.  HOWEVER, my daughter, like every other girl in the known universe, is obsessed with Frozen, and therefore there is no merchandise available (at regular retail prices, that is--if you want to pay quadruple markup on Amazon, you have lots of options!).  Luckily, Frozen is a pretty good theme to DIY--even in March, when all of the snowflakes and winter scenes have long been absent from the clearance shelves.

How's that for repurposing Rapunzel's wig from Halloween?

Here are the elements we used to put together a really fun party--I'll go through them for inspiration for anyone else out there trying to put something like this together without spending an arm and a leg or too many hours of their lives!

I almost forgot to include the invitation--I was so proud of it!  I was able to put it together using PicMonkey--I love this photo-editing site so much.  Then I had them printed at Costco (5x7's are something like 30 cents each) and put them in our leftover Christmas card envelopes.  For the ice castle background I used a free download of desktop wallpaper that I found online.

I got some hilarious feedback on the invitation--some girls displayed them in their rooms, some sisters were even fighting over who got to keep it!  Little Sister has hers pinned to the wall by her bed.


Decor:  Primarily, we used snowflakes.  The kids cut out some, and I cut out lots (what can I say; I'm faster!  And I actually love cutting out snowflakes.)

We used them to decorate our main snack table/focal point:

Background is a light blue plastic dollar tree tablecloth.  It was really see-through, but once the snowflakes were on it wasn't too distracting.  I also cut a piece off that was just the right size to cover our kitchen table, where we put the grown up drinks.

Some of the snowflakes were decorated with free printable Frozen images (free printable party kit available for download from Homeketeers)--I printed them on computer paper and the kids glued them down.  We used printables from this kit for other elements of the party too.

We added some tulle (an 8-yard roll from Dollar Tree, I only used a little) and more snowflakes to our dining room light, and strung some snowflakes in the window of our front door too, to add to the atmosphere:

I thought I'd find more uses for the tulle, but this was about it.

Gift Bags:  We also used snowflakes to turn our plain colored party bags (10-pack from Dollar Tree) into Frozen theme bags--Snowflake + picture of a character (or two) + name I printed out from the computer.

Carrots = Olaf's nose.  Ice cream is frozen, so that works too, right?

Our gift bags included ice-cream shaped bubbles (3/$1 at Dollar Tree), a carrot straw (5/$1 at Dollar Tree--easter seasonal stuff, or a snowman's nose?  You decide.), some glittery snowflake stickers ($2 for 30 stickers on Amazon, each kid got 6 stickers, so 40 cents per kid), a little tiara (59 cents at Party City) and a sucker that reminded me of an icicle (3/$1 at Party City, we attached the Frozen tag). The boys got a sparkly pencil (10/$1 at Dollar Tree) with a Frozen label instead of the tiara.  Oh, I also didn't buy enough of the ice cream bubbles and then they ran out, so I supplemented with bubbles in a carrot-shaped bottle--inspired by Olaf's nose.

Sparkly pencil with printable straw flag

Prizes for the games (all from Dollar Tree)

Food:  The main course was an ice cream cake from Baskin Robbins:

The birthday girl got to sample flavors and she chose chocolate chip mint with chocolate cake, which was yummy.  I was totally impressed with their decorations!  We provided the snowflake sprinkles and the paper Elsa and Anna, which I printed and cut from this website.  The assembly was pretty painstaking--I don't know that I would have done it in hindsight, but they did turn out cool and they were dramatic on the cake.  I stood them on bamboo skewers--make sure not to put them too close to the candle!

For our other snacks, we had

Snowman Noses (baby carrots) and Snowflake Apples (sliced into circles then cut with a cookie cutter--this was the one snack that was more labor-intensive than it should have been, but they were a big hit).

Reindeer Chow (some sort of trail-mixy stuff from Costco) and Icicle Sticks (pretzel sticks coated in white chocolate bark)

And Snowball Snacks (Pirate's Booty)

Didn't anyone ever tell us not to eat yellow snow?

We labeled the water bottles "Melted Ice" and our juice boxes were "Arendelle Punch."  I used the free printable straw tags from this free Frozen Printable Party Pack and wrote the kids' names on them to keep boxes from getting mixed up.

I made labels for all of the foods using images I found online--the kids got a kick out of looking at all the pictures.

And finally, our activities:

I printed out a bunch of Frozen coloring pages for the kids to do as everyone was arriving--the girls were totally into it.  Don't know how that would have gone over at a boy party, but MY boy was into it.  At least the pictures of Olaf.  And I don't know what I was thinking printing out equal numbers of both Anna and Elsa--I had to print extra Elsas twice to keep the peace.  Coloring happened again at the end of the party as people were leaving.

We played Pin the Nose on Olaf (pretty self-explanatory):

an Icecube balancing game (each kid had a partner and a spoon, I gave one partner an ice cube and they had to walk it to their partner, transfer it, and the partner came back the other way.)

I liked it, and it was really cute to see the concentration on the kids' faces, but it wasn't the kid favorite.  Maybe with an outdoor party this would have worked better, but it was really rainy and soggy here that day.

And Cold Snowball, our version of Hot Potato.

Down to the final four

What worked out really well was that we were using the Frozen soundtrack for the music (obviously), and as kids got "out" of the game, they joined a sing/dance-along to the music while the other kids finished the game.  We ended up adding another round of JUST sing and dance-along at the end.

I also had a bunch of white balloons that I was planning to blow up to play "keep your snowball off the ground" in the backyard, but it was too muddy.  Particularly when the guest of honor had this outfit to keep clean:

Her auntie bought it before Christmas!  Lucky thing, since they've been sold out for months I guess.  Pretty fantastic birthday present.

We had so much fun, and Little Sister was totally delighted when the girls called her Elsa when she arrived at school this week.  None of the preparation I did felt like too much to me--it was all pretty simple and affordable, and I was having fun doing it, and the kids enjoyed it, so it was a win.  I know they would have enjoyed themselves even without the food labels and theme activities etc, but I get a kick out of coming up with that stuff in a manageable way, so we went for it.

I did a craft show!

I did my very first craft show this weekend, at my son's elementary school.  It felt like a pretty good way to give it a try--I had a reason to be involved, a portion of my sales were donated to the school, it wasn't a huge event.  I was really excited and nervous when I was accepted, but I am so glad I did it!

There was very little information about how much traffic would be at this fair, so my main concern was inventory.  I had pretty much NOTHING when I found out I was doing the show, 4 weeks exactly before the event.  I spent all of my spare time shopping and sewing up until the week before the show, when I started tagging and figuring out a display.  I am so lucky that I have a mom and MIL who also do art shows, because they hooked me up when it came to the booth.  Oh, AND I'm lucky that neither of them were doing a show last weekend!  If I'm going to do more shows (which I think I will), I'm going to need to buy some stuff for displays because I probably won't always be able to borrow their stuff!

Speaking of which, here's how my display turned out:

Fleece hats up on the left, coloring wallets down on the table, headbands in the middle,
and upcycled scarves and armwarmers on the right.  

Ignore the stuff stacked up on the stage behind me--even though it was kind of an ugly backdrop for my booth, I actually loved my spot because the stage functioned as an extra counter space behind my booth for me to spread out my stuff!  I will definitely need to be more organized next time when I don't have that luxury.  I was shuffling bags/stickers/receipts and stuff more than I wanted to be since I didn't have a great system in place.

I felt really good during the show.  There was constant traffic, and because it was a fundraiser for the school people were in a generous mood, and there were a lot of familiar faces of parents I'd seen around the school.  I'm not sure if I would feel more awkward at a show in a less-familiar venue, but I was surprised that I didn't feel more weird about hawking my wares to strangers.

One of the reasons I wanted to do the show was to see how people responded to the different products I have.  I mean, I think it's all cool, but you never know what the people are going to want.  So I learned a lot about where to put my time when creating inventory, and also I have some ideas for how to rework the displays to allow customers a better look at things.

Now that I've started looking into other events, I realize how spoiled I was at this one--the event was one day only, just 5 hours!  Now I've been looking at other applications and finding out that they are two 9 hour days, and thinking, Nope!  I don't want to give up my whole weekend sitting at a table!  But I will probably have to just bite the bullet and do it--I still have a lot of inventory to sell!

Speaking of inventory, I'm planning on juicing up my poor forlorn Etsy site with some of the leftover product.  Which means I'll have to cross my fingers for cooperative young heads to model some hats and headbands.  Not sure if that will be happening this week!  But when it does, I will update my link.  The photos, aarrrgh--that is the reason why I just can't keep my Etsy site up to date!  Anybody else have that problem?

Tie-Dyed Tank Dress

Are you kidding me with this, Mom?  You are just now blogging the tie-dye dress we made together in JULY?

Ah, it's okay!  What do I care?  I don't read your blog anyway!

Catch ya later.

(Dress made from two kid-sized white cotton tees bought at Dollar Tree, some scraps of rib knit off an old t-shirt for the armhole binding, and some 1/4 inch elastic inside the waistband casing. Used the existing neckline of one tee and the existing hem of the other.  Made the dress without the armhole casings, tie-dyed it with help from Little Sister, who was very particular about colors and design, then after rinsing, washing, and drying added the armhole bindings.)

5th Birthday: The Racecar Party

My oldest turned five.  FIVE!  That is full-on big kid territory.  As I've done a few birthday parties now, I am learning some things about myself as it relates to birthday party preparations.

1.  I am cheap
2.  I am lazy
3.  I am overwhelmed by the party setups I see on Pinterest.

While the full-on theme parties look amazing, I can't help but wonder how much the actual kids (both the birthday kid and the party-goers) appreciate all the work and expense goes into a party like that.  I'm sure the adults are all duly impressed, but...is the party for them, or for the kids?   I feel like the kids have just as much fun at a party that flows well and is well-organized, regardless of the tablescape.  I know for some people, decorating for the party is really fun and they love figuring out all of the little details, but for me...well, I think those parties look so fabulous in pictures, but when I start thinking about what is actually involved and what I would have to do to create it, I have to stop because if I got into it I'm pretty sure my head would explode.

Here are a few things that I have done to keep myself sane with the party prep:

• Keep the decorations to one main party area.  In my case, this is the living/dining room, the first area you see when you enter the house.  Even though the kids will spend time in the kitchen, basement, and bathroom, I don't bother decorating those.  I subscribe to this same theory with my holiday decorating.

Our main party area

This became the food table.  Beverages were in the kitchen.

• Reuse party decorations.  We have had the same basic Happy Birthday banner for years now, and have been slowly making our way through the same two colors of streamers (red and purple) party after party.  I also supplement the printed Happy Birthday plates/cups/napkins with leftover solid plates/cups/napkins from parties gone by.

• Maximize Dollar Tree purchases, especially if they happen to have party stuff that matches your theme.  Unfortunately for me, I didn't buy up racecar party stuff when they had it a couple of months ago, because I was worried that my guy would change his mind before the invitations went out, and when I went back for it there were only a couple of racecar items left, but the few posters and cellophane goody bags I was able to get are nicely supplemented by plain colored plates and cups.  Racecar stuff for the goody bag is pretty easy to come by--I was able to fill the racecar-printed goody bags for less than $1 each--Hot Wheels stickers, a die-cast racecar, a plastic top (not racecar related), a Tootsie Roll Pop, and a pack of Sixlets.  

Goody bag contents--cars were in a 4-pk at dollar store, stickers were from a book of 300 Hot Wheels stickers so a $1 book was cut into favors for all the kids.  The bags were a Dollar Tree 24-pack or something like that.  Suckers were a 10-pack, and the Sixlets (reminded me of traffic lights) came in a big bag for $1, plenty for everybody.

• Note--Dollar Tree's return policy is exchange only.  I SHOULD have just bought the dang racecar stuff, then traded it in for something else if the boy changed his mind.  Now that the girl tells me she wants a Mermaid party when she turns 3 in two months, I have been buying mermaid/underwater stuff there when I see it and holding on to the receipt so that I can return it if necessary later.

• Have the kids make decorations and games.  No, they will not look like a professional party planner decorated your house, but the kids love to feel involved and giving them some poster paper and markers and letting them go at it gets them out of your hair for a while.  

He didn't want to color anything in.

Pin the car on the racetrack--the envelope to the left has little paper racecars in it. The boy colored each one a different color and wrote a party-goer's name on it, so when they play the game they know which car belonged to each kid.

• I have also had the kids decorate brown paper bags for the goody bags when I couldn't find cheap ones that fit the theme.  Printing out coloring sheets then cutting out and gluing the images to the bags is an easy way to do it--that also works for wall decor.

• Have a couple of games that kids can do when they feel like it--we like "Pin the _____ on the _____" (with the blanks filled in to fit your theme--"Pin the racecar on the track", "Pin the owl in the tree,"  etc.)  

The Boy posing by the game after the kids had played it

And of course, the special racecar shirt I appliqued for him

• For the racecar party we made a ramp for the kids to race cars down--the cars that we put in their goody bags.  Some detail about the ramp:  I made it out of two sheets of black posterboard (Dollar Tree--2/$1), some styrofoam packaging that we hadn't thrown out yet (no room in the garbage--here in Portland we only get pickup every other week so sometimes it's hard to get rid of everything!), and duct tape.  I used whiteout tape to make the lane lines (bought at Dollar Tree), and some printable checkerboard and hot wheels images that I found here (also used it for the cake) to decorate it.  The whole thing cost me $2.  The kids LOVED racing cars down it!  They also found other things to race down the ramp--princess figurines, rubber balls, etc.)

Edges are folded up to keep cars on the ramp (somewhat)

Ooh, pretty.

It was not very sturdy, but I was amazed that it not only held up for the whole party, but is as a matter of fact STILL residing in our basement where it is frequently used by the kids and slept on by the cats, about a month later.

I should have written the kids' names on their racecars--we only had 4 different colors, so it was hard to keep track of which car belonged to whom.

• We did have one game for kids to play all at once--a Racecar bingo that I found at Dollar Tree. But the kids were so happy just playing with the ramp, the pin-the-racecar poster, and the toys around our house that we never got around to playing the bingo game.  But good to have it in my back pocket.
• The cake.  Well, this is such a personal decision.  I LOVE cake.  Make that, I love GOOD cake. But as I've mentioned, I'm cheap.  For a few years, we ordered beautiful cakes from a fantastic bakery and I loved them.  But they were not cheap.  So then I ordered grocery store cakes with cute decorations that fit our theme, and they were cheap...but they did not taste good.  So I've started making my own cakes.  To me, taste and cost is more important than decoration.  I would love to just do cupcakes, and put little toothpicks with flags in them that fit the theme (this is one way those Pinterest theme parties are helpful to me--free printables!  I would skip flagging the straws, silverware, napkins, etc--but flags for the cupcakes seems a lot easier than decorating cupcakes or a cake.)  But my kids so far have always wanted cakes, not cupcakes.  And cakes are harder to decorate, in my opinion.  So I just look at pictures online to get an idea and try to do something simple.  This year, I made 2 box cakes (doctored up to taste better according to this blog post--I really think it did work to make the cake more rich and from-scratch tasting) in 9x13 pans, and using this fantastic frosting from Smitten Kitchen.

I searched Pinterest for racecar cakes and got several ideas, and this is my version.

I wanted small cars--these were in an 8-pk at Dollar Tree. The trophy also came from there.

The Happy Birthday candles were $2.50 at Walmart. This was a nice purchase because I didn't have to worry about my writing, and they saved room for the racetrack.

A better view of the checkerboard finish line, taped to a couple of toothpicks.

A decorating note--I made my 5 by putting chocolate frosting in a baggie with a big corner cut off, then squeezed out the shape on top of the green frosting, and spread it flat with a knife into the 5 shape that I wanted.  

Then I topped that with crushed chocolate cookies to make the road.  Then, obviously, edged the road and the top of the cake with M&M's.  This cake was HUGE!  We had 8 kids at the party, and probably 14 adults.  Since hardly any adults seem to eat cake these days (with ME being the obvious exception, and a few others), we had over half the cake left over!  This worked out well, because I just cut the leftover into a rectangle, wrapped it in saran wrap and foil, and stuck it in the freezer.  Then a week later I pulled it out, scraped the old racetrack decorations off the top, made a little fresh frosting, and served it again for our family party!  Still tasted great.

Recycled birthday cake

Nobody seemed to mind.

• Keep the DIY's simple.  I did go a little more all-out with last year's owl party, because it was harder to find inexpensive owl stuff for favors and games at that point, but I made sure to choose projects that would be fairly quick AND fun for me to make.  But I still do prefer to go Dollar Tree when possible, because it's obviously easier and usually cheaper than doing it myself.

• Invitations:  I love photo invitations.  I have never figured out my Photoshop software, so until I take a class I have found many ways to make do.  My new favorite to make custom photo invitations is www.picmonkey.com.  So awesome.  I have been using them for everything--valentines, party invitations, display cards for my headbands, marketing postcards.  I love it, and it's so user-friendly, and I've yet to upgrade from the free service.  However, I had not yet discovered them when I made The Boy's party invitation, so here's what I did (I could have done ALL of this invitation creation on picmonkey. I'll show you how Little Sister's party invitation turns out so you can see what I do there):
• Took him to the mall to ride in a "racecar" for 75 cents (I also had to let his sister do a ride, so that's an extra 75 cents) and took photos of him "driving"
• Emailed the photo to myself so I could access it on my phone
• Chose a decorative template from RedStamp (a cool free app to make photo e-cards that are also printable when you email it to yourself) but left the text area blank--there wasn't enough room to give all the party info.  The RedStamp part is the bunting, which kind of reminded me of something you'd see at a road race, I guess...
• Uploaded THAT saved image to Phonto (another free app that has lots of options for adding text to photos), where I could add the translucent banner across the photo
• Emailed THAT image to myself so that I could add party info text on my home computer (I used Picasa, Google's free photo editing software)--that's the red and blue text at the bottom.
• Uploaded the finished invitation to Costco, where I had them printed as 5x7's for 39 cents each, and mailed them out using leftover Christmas card envelopes.  Total cost for 10 invitations:  $5.40 plus stamps (including our racecar rides).  

I can't resist the cheesy age-related rhymes!

• I also made him a "special" breakfast before school on his actual birthday.  I spread nutella on a toaster waffle, laid down a layer of banana slices, then topped it with another toaster waffle and wrote "5" on top with frosting and added candles.  Looked like a cute little breakfast birthday cake for very little effort!

• I have to make a note about the gift I made for him.  I did a separate post about it, but here's the Sleuth costume:

With accessories

Click here for the full post about the costume.

Finally, we STILL haven't gotten to it yet (BAD!  BAD host!), but I printed out these free Thank You cards for Liam to work on.  I like how they match the bunting on the invitation.

Freebie from 74 Lime Lane

WHEW that ended up being a long post!  Guess that explains why it took me a month to get around to finishing it.