Thomas the Train Birthday Invitation

I decided awhile ago to do a train theme for Grant's birthday and since you really can't get generic train party supplies, or at least I've never seen any, it became a Thomas the Train party.  Let me say this.......I really don't like Thomas the Train.

I was secretly hoping he would pass over the cartoon so I'd never have to see it, but of course that's not the case.  He really doesn't care what I think about it and I decided to put my own dislikes aside and give him the party theme he would love.

Am I a good mom or what? lol

As I did last year for his Mickey themed party I set a $50 budget for the whole party, and quickly realized with this budget I was going to have to do some more improvising with decorations because there was no way I could afford to buy all the Thomas party supplies in the store.  I have lucked out with Grant's Toy Story and Mickey birthdays because I had the Cricut cartridges to do the main decorations.  But what do you know, Cricut doesn't make a Thomas cartridge so I'm on my own.

If I was the kind of person to look on the bright side of things I would see this as a great opportunity to stretch my creativity by coming up with new decorations on my own.......I'm not that person and I much prefer having the Cricut do that grunt work for me.

I did purchase a table cloth from the store with Thomas on it but this is the only Thomas specific item I have bought.  We have a small apartment which makes it nice for parties because the smaller area you have to decorate the less decorations you actually need to make a big impact which in turn means less money spent, and I'm all about that.

I decided to pick 3 colors, blue, aqua, and red and bought streamers and plan on buying balloons in these colors as well.  I had intended to buy some train clipart off Etsy.com I found that actually looks just like Thomas (without the smiling face) for $5, however as with any small budget, cuts had to be made somewhere to allow for other spending and I decided to find Thomas images online and use those instead.  $5 doesn't seem like much in the grand scheme of things but when it comes to a $50 budget that includes food, party supplies, and decorations, every penny counts.

I have only finished the invites for now as most of the decorations will have to be finished the week before the party (October is a super busy month around our house).  I had grand ideas of a really cute train ticket invite with the perfect font and images on it.  Then reality, pregnancy exhaustion, a part time job, and the month of October hit and that idea went down the crapper pretty quick.  Instead I opted for a simple invite printed on white cardstock with the Thomas image I downloaded from the internet and backed it with plain old red cardstock.  I cut the squares of the cardstocks out with my Cricut ( why use an old school paper cutter when you can push a button and watch the Cricut do it for you?).  This invite is similar to the others I've done, which is exactly why I wanted to do something different this time around but maybe next year.

I'm pretty lucky in that everyone I invite lives pretty much on the same road so I didn't bother with envelopes, stamps, or mailing them at all.  Instead I drove down the road and dropped them into their mailboxes.  One thing I hate about invites is the cost of stamps (if I wasn't one of those sentimental people who save cards and invites I would so do e-vites).

Even though these weren't the invitation I had dreamed of, they serve their purpose and I'm really glad they are done.  I guess there comes a point in life when you have to give in and realize you can't do it all.....

I'm just not ready for that yet. haha.