Parties & "prends."

[My last two posts were a bit somber & melancholy, so I think it's time for some lightheartedness & fun. (= ]

Party planning for a one-year-old boy is so difficult. Especially when you're a 20-year-old chick & your partner-in-crime is a 24-year-old chick as well. Mae & I are just encased in a world full of paper, pastels, & party things during our shopping trips & online perusing, so of course we're going to gravitate towards the pretty, girly things first instead of the "boy" things this party is based on. So far, we've made a decent dent in the party [despite getting off-track many times & heading towards the girly stuff, haha]:

-The theme colors are chosen, & we've [more like, I; haha] decided on: a tropical blue, orange, a semi-bright green, & dark brown. White is also included, but it's mainly a complementary color [side note: black & white are complementary for ANY color]. It isn't used as much as the other colors, but you'll see spots of it here & there.

-The main theme itself is "Noah's Ark" because how appropriate is that? [If you don't know, my godson's name is Noah.] The theme has been very difficult to find, believe it or not. For some reason, "Noah's Ark" themes are very prevalent with baby showers, not birthdays. Why? I have no clue. Blame the party companies. Haha. Thankfully, my diligence paid off & I found a theme as close as it could get to "Noah's Ark." The colors were perfect [these colors inspired the theme colors] & the way the animals were drawn were so cute. The overall aesthetic was very pleasing & not too "baby", but more towards "chic baby." Mae even came up with the saying: "Come join us on Noah's birthday boat!" for the invitations & now we're pondering whether to switch it to "birthday ark" or keep the alliteration as it is because I LOVE me some alliteration. Haha.

-The invitations are very languidly being drawn up & devised. I created some "style prototypes" already & a style has been picked out; thankfully, picking it out went swiftly. I'm hoping that the same animals & same colors mentioned can be incorporated into the invites because if not, I will be...yeah. Haha. But seriously.

-We've already bought: brown paper gift bags for the kids' favor bags, a few things to put inside the bags, paper for Noah's special hat, an extremely PERFECT ribbon that has the EXACT theme colors for Noah's special hat [I jumped up & down at least three times after finding that ribbon], paper [in all the theme colors] for the kids' hats, white ribbon for the kids' hats, zoo stickers for the kids' hats, paper for Noah's birthday banner, dark brown yarn for Noah's birthday banner, & prizes for the games the kids will play at the party. [I think I got mostly everything so far. I'll put up a tentative list of things we still need in a later post. And there is still a somewhat large amount of things we still need. Oy.]

-The most important part of this whole entire party, what this party totally depends on, has not been solved...yet; & that is THE VENUE. This is the most time-consuming, pain-stakingly difficult process of the whole planning process & it will probably surpass the favor bag-designing & any other craft-making project involved. What should have been a fairly easy road in this has turned into such a fickle debate. Hopefully with all the suggestions that I've given & that others have given, a decision will be made soon because the prospective date for this party is around that time where graduations & weddings & company parties will also be taking place. This does not bode well for us if deliberation continues because we might lose potential dates & I will not be happy if we lose potential dates.

-Mae & I are going to undertake: making the centerpieces out of Noah's Similac bottles [they are going to be AWESOME, mainly because WE'RE working on them. Hahaha], doing the gift bags for the kids, creating the kids' paper hats, making Noah's birthday banner, finalizing the "thank you" photo favors for the families attending the party, & I'll be making Noah's special party hat. I think this is it, unless someone has decided to make the envelopes for the invites. Hahaha, just kidding, Mae.

Despite the fact this party will definitely bring some stress, it has brought joys with it. I actually like doing things like this; I like planning parties [no, I do NOT want to become a party planner] & I like doing crafts [Pinay Martha Stewart! Whaaaaat!]. And, I've also gotten closer to my fellow party planner, which has been such a great occurrence. I've known this girl since we were wee little ones, but there was a point where we hadn't seen each other in a decade & then some more after that. We get along so well & I'm glad we're always laughing with each other; usually those things we're laughing about are really perverted, but hey, that's us. Haha. Love you, Mae! And you know you love me back even though I suggest some insane projects like envelope making & six-foot banner creating & whatever else I've suggested or said that you just wanted to jump over the table & tape my mouth shut. Haha. Oh you're going to hate me when I plan my wedding. (=