sunday was my older daughter's 14th birthday, and like almost every year, it was a soccer tournament weekend and we had to wait for her game schedule to be released before making any birthday decisions. it didn't turn out to be a very good schedule, which left her unsure about what she wanted to do, if anything. so, while she was busy being disappointed and indecisive, i secretly took it out of her control and set about planning a last minute surprise back yard bash for saturday night after her game. i knew she'd be hungry and she loves crawfish, so a crawfish boil became my theme. i created the invites as a pic to be texted and sent it off to one of her friends to circulate. then i printed a few variations of it for decorations...
to set a crawfish table, all you really need is newspaper, which was the basis of my invite design. a few full legal copies of it were the perfect addition to our crawfish table for a fun personal touch!
half page print outs cut into flags, alternating with blue cardstock flags, made for a cute banner - and another perfect personal touch. a few uncut ones taped around in different places let the birthday girl see the complete invite she'd missed. don't you love that blue and red washi tape?
a party like this definitely needed a photo booth with fun props. i added another flag banner to my set up and used elements of the invite along with the same fonts and colors to create a logo style caption for the pics. i highly recommend sparkbooth for party photo booths. i love the personalization possibilities and how easy it is to set up and use. kids (and many adults) always have fun when i bring this out!
and last, but definitely not least, i even figured out how to perform surgery on swedish fish to make candy crawfish to embellish the cake (!!), with yet another little piece of the invite, in flag form, flying above. over all, the decorations, mainly created from the invite, really pulled everything together. plus, they were easy to hide and quick to assemble, so the birthday girl was very surprised even though i did it all right under her nose - yay!!
:) lexi
