A Wild West Birthday

Our kids were born exactly two years and one week apart so it is only natural that we'll be throwing a joint birthday party for them. At least until they have their own sets of friends to invite. For months, Adrian had been requesting a Mickey Mouse birthday party. I had pinned countless amounts of ideas for decor, food and had even started designing the invitation. It seemed perfect because Celeste loves her Minnie Mouse doll more than any other toy.

But then came Sheriff Callie...

If you have not seen Sheriff Callie's Wild West, it's a Disney Junior show about a kitty cat who is the sheriff of a Wild West town, voiced by Mandy Moore (of "Candy" fame). She has Deputy Peck, a woodpecker, and Toby, a talking cactus, as her sidekicks. Her horse is named Sparky and has blue sparkly hair and her lasso is magic and can do pretty much anything.

Adrian quotes this show almost constantly. He has, on more than one occasion, told me that "I'm the best horsey in the whole, wide world." So touching! He also will follow me places and say "I'm coming too on account that I'm the Deputy!" Those are some pretty big words that sound mighty cute when coming from an almost-three year old. Unless he's following you to the bathroom the kitchen where you were planning to sneak-eat a cookie. He also sings songs from the show and seems to always be claiming that we have "train bandits, pssh!"

Now, Adrian wants a Sheriff Callie birthday party. I didn't put up much of a protest when he changed his mind because having a Wild West-themed party seems like a blast to me! I've been working on the invitations for a little while and they finally went out in the mail today!

I don't normally do things with character images, so this was a new challenge. Trying to find balance between the characters and the birthday information (ahem, my precious kids'names!) was difficult. The majority of Sheriff Callie's images are heavy in pink, which I love. But I didn't want the invitation to feel too pink. I needed to find a balance of pink, neutrals and another complementary color. Thankfully, Sparky the horse is all blue and I was able to pull his fur color into the invitation. I also created flag banners in Illustrator using "western-looking" fabrics*. The banner tied the colors nicely together without hitting you over the head with either pink or blue.

Adrian loves his invitation! He was so excited when they came in from the photo store. He took them all out and spread them out on the couch so he could see them. Then, he watched another Callie episode.

After the party, I'll recap with photos and with files for other designs I'm making for that day.

*I've never been to the West, unless you count Las Vegas. so any knowledge I have about things that look, or sound, western is mostly from watching TV...mainly Sheriff Callie. 

Link to Etsy.