Calling All Superheroes - Brady's Birthday Invitation

In full party-planning mode here, folks!  I was a little sidelined last week, and happily so, as one of my best friends Carrie recruited me last minute to help her host a "Grumpy Old Men" themed birthday party for her 37 year old husband.  It was the perfect theme for him, given that he's an "old soul" who's always joking about how he's an old man hiding out in a middle aged young man's body {love you, Billy!  ;o)} 

The bash was this past Monday night, and since it was all so last minute {the party was decided on and planned in just a few days!}, we stayed pretty busy getting it all together.  I'll hopefully have a few fuzzy iPhone pics for you soon so you can see what we pulled together {since I know you all LIVE for the amazing professional photography on this blog....ha!}.

Anyhoot...after that short and super fun little detour...I am back to planning my son's third birthday party that will be here in exactly one week.  Ahhhh!!  So many projects, so little time, and I think I must secretly enjoy pressure because I always find myself doing things right down to the last wire.

So far, I at least have the invitations sent, and three cheers for all the RSVPs!  Everyone invited is coming, so we're super excited!

Here is the finished invitation that I ordered from Hicks.  I personalized it using Photoshop and a free-for-personal-use font I found on the world-wide-webbers {Google search for "free comic book font"}, then printed it on my own printer at home...

I also designed these delivery and return address labels to stick to the front and back of each envelope, and printed them on sticker paper I got at the craft store.  Here's the mock-up version to show you...

{personal note on the round sticker labels I made:  I'm a devils-in-the details freak, so I'm a bit bothered by the imperfections in my circle return address labels here.  I normally order and use up bajillions of the round labels from my favorite go-to supply store, Paper Source, for stuff like this throughout the year.  It would have made for gloriously perfect round stickers...but alas, I thought I had some extra laying around the house and discovered that I did not.  A jaunt out to Dallas with baby in tow was out of the question, and with no time to spare for ordering I just went ahead with the sticky paper I had...there's a bit of stretch to the sticker paper I bought so booooooooo!!! on this being less-than-ideal.  Learn from my mistakes, and always be sure to have plenty plain white round Paper Source labels around.  You'll use them up, I promise!}

I bought some scrapbook paper at Michael's to make envelope liners.  The paper was a heavy weight cardstock, and therefore too thick to use for this project, so I took the single page I bought to Kinko's and made color copies of it on regular 8.5x11 printer paper to line the inside of each envelope.  I cut up an extra red envelope to make a template, then traced and cut out each liner and attached it with a little glue stick action to the inside of the envelope.

And that's it!  Super-fun superhero mail...gotta love it!

I really enjoyed embellishing the cute Hick's invitations, and am so happy with the way they turned out!

Stay tuned next week for lots of fun party details in the works, as well as some extra-super superhero party inspiration.

Have a great weekend!