A Safari Party for DW

Hi guys! Yep, you must have guessed from my sneak peek and from my previous post that we are planning to throw our little monkey a safari-themed party for his first birthday.  In my series of posts on our family’s party planning for DW, this one would be about the stuff we already have with us for the party.

Invitations

I asked Regina Silva of Wedgienet to create DW’s invitations. I asked Reg first if she was willing to do invitations and fortunately she said yes. We agreed on the design and the terms of our agreement. Reg was very easy to talk to and knew exactly right away what I wanted. I liked the invites to have cute animals and she did just that.

Giveaway:  Personalized Notepads

Reg also makes notepads, tumblers and buttons. I asked her if she could also create notepads and buttons for DW’s loot bags and she agreed. All these took us about 4 months from start to finish, there was a long lull in between because we finished so fast that we just waited for October to kick in so that Reg could start printing.

The notepads aren’t really for the kids but for the parents. We wanted to have something for them in the lootbags that they could use. I had the pins made so that I could pin them on the loot bags as an extra.

Loot bags

BDW and I thought it would be easy to go to any party supply store or any tiangge and we could buy a generic paper bag with animal prints and that would be it. Well, that’s not the case. There is an oversupply of stuff out there with Winnie the Pooh, Cars, Dora, Diego, Transformers, Ben10, High School Musical designs but not enough of the generic stuff that we were looking for. We thought that any kids supply store would at least have some stuff with generic animal prints right?  Wrong.

So BDW and I had to get creative. BDW’s sister had drawstring bags made for our nephew’s 1st birthday last year and so we thought that maybe we could do that. This option was very doable given that BDW’s family owns a t-shirt factory and the bag requires just a simple pattern and easy sewing.  After being given the go-signal by BDW’s dad, BDW and I  went straight to Market! Market! (ala Project Runway Philippines haha) to buy fabric for the little one’s bags. Animal prints are in style now right? It would be easy to buy fabric for bags right?

Wrong (again! huhu).  The animal printed fabrics we’ve seen are very soft (think chiffon). So I told BDW that we better try our luck in  Kamuning, the place to go to for fabrics for us folks up north.

As you can see by the pic on the left,  Kamuning came through alright! We found them in a shop that sells upholstery textile. They were just right and were only 150 per yard. Given that a yard can produce 10 bags hello jackpot!

More Loot for the Loot Bags

As of now, we’re still trying to figure out what else we could fill the loot bags with. We bought crayons, coloring books, coin banks, puzzle cards, luggage tags, cookies and candies. We’re waiting for the loot bags to be completed. I’ll post pics of the assembly right away! Promise!