Going On A Treasure Hunt...

Yesterday Riley was at his little girlfriend's house ALL day.  What a wonderful break for me since Andy was out of town and I had to run Kendall to a follow up appt. for her ears (which are healing nicely by the way).  In Riley's absence and taking full advantage of Kendall's nap, I decided to get started on making Riley's birthday party invitations.

Have I mentioned before how much I love my cricut?  I keep finding more and more uses for it!  I used it to create the birthday invites and it made life so much easier!

The first thing I had to do was to figure out the wording for his invites.  This is what I came up with:

I printed it out on cardstock and then cut the edges to look torn.  I used some distressing ink to give them an aged look.  This looked much better than trying to burn the edges...I was so afraid I was going to set off the smoke detector and wake Kendall!  I also have a Xyron sticker maker and have found that tool incredibly useful with projects.  I ran the cardstock through the sticker maker and then adhered them to the black cardstock.  I used my trimmer to cut the small openings for the red ribbon.

Then I decided that the invites needed an envelope.  One of my cartridges has this feature so I decided to try it out.  It took me awhile to figure out exactly size I needed - that's what all my scrap paper is for, right?

I finally got a chance to use my trimmer to score paper instead of just cutting.  I scored the folds so that they would be straight lines and then used scrapbook adhesive to seal them up!  

I thought a skull and crossbones would dress up the outside of the envelopes - again using the sticker maker and Viola!  

Now on to decorations and game planning!  I have created a banner of skull and crossbones to hang already - putting that cricut to good use again!  I also plan to make a Jolly Roger flag to hang from the swing set aka pirate ship.  I found some fish netting that might be fun to decorate the table with - after I make Riley his pirate ship cake to go on it!  

I've got to come up with some good clues for our treasure hunt.  I'm thinking that a treasure chest pinata might be a good treasure for them to seek out and then make loot bags for them to collect their "treasure" once it gets broken open.  I also plan to create a "plank" for the kids to walk and have a sword fight using pool noodles.  We are also going make our own individual pirate hats - I think it will be cool for the kids to decorate their own to match their personalities.  Do you think the girls would want pink pirate hats or black like the boys?  We're also going to wear eye patches to look more like real pirates.  Riley's going to get more mileage out of his halloween costume!  

I would love to hear any ideas or suggestions that you have to share!  Thanks!