Another birthday coming up...

Ava's 6th birthday is just around the corner. In fact, it's only a few weeks away. Time to get cracking on the party preparations.

Inspired by her best friend's birthday party last year, Ava has decided that rainbows and colours will be the theme of the day. Unfortunately Ava was not able to make it to her best friend's birthday party last year as we live on opposite sides of the world. She has, however, seen lots of photos and is desperate to recreate almost every moment!

While we will be "stealing" some ideas from her best friend's party I figured that I should really come up with a few of my own.

First up are the invitations. I've been working on them tonight so Ava can hand them out at school tomorrow. Here's a little sneak peek...

A snippet of Ava's party invitations

More birthday party projects will be coming soon as we work on them. In the meantime you might want to check out Ava's first five birthday parties...

Party time... again!

I can't believe it, but Ava's 4th birthday is coming up very soon  - where has the time gone? 
I'm currently in the process of creating invitations for her upcoming birthday party which has prompted me to have a look through invitations I have designed in the past. Some I have been really happy with and others which seemed good at the time just don't seem to cut it now. The invitations that I have been most happy with were for Ava's 2nd birthday. Wow, two years ago already!


Anyway, I thought I'd share the invitations from Ava's 2nd birthday party here on Little Hiccups. But first a background into the characters on the card...


While I was pregnant with Ava I came across a fantastic book called "The Pigeon Finds a Hotdog" by Mo Willems. It very quickly became my favourite children's book. The drawings have a retro style, muted colours and are quite simplistic; but with just the slightest line here and there Mo Willems creates the mood of the characters. And boy does that pigeon have some moods! From the look of sheer excitement on the pigeon's face upon finding a hotdog through to the frustrated tantrum thrown at the duckling who wants to share the find, the pigeon goes through almost every emotion you can think of.


By the time Ava was born I had added "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus" and "Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late" to my collection (plus more later). There was no escaping the pigeon for Ava and she soon came to love the books as much as me :)


For Ava's 2nd birthday party we decided to throw a "Hotdog Party" fit for a pigeon. Ok, that doesn't sound so great considering the low standards pigeons usually have. Mmm... cigarette butts... yum! Let's rephrase that as "a Hotdog Party fit for THE pigeon"! Much better. The pigeon featured on the invitations, lolly bags and birthday cake. Hotdogs were served and I even managed to track down Gummi hotdogs to go in the lolly bags. The invitations were laid out in the same format as the pigeon books. All of the text in the pigeon books appears in either speech or thought bubbles. This worked very well for the invitations - just delete the original text and add in party details! 


Copies of the invitations (front and back) are below as well as a photo of the folded finished product. 

Inside of invitation 

Front flap and back of invitation

An imaginary day in London

Ava drew the following pictures recently to send to a good friend who lives in London.
Before she started drawing I asked her what you can see in London. Her very confident response came back straight away "The Statue of Liberty". Wrong!

To help Ava out a little I showed her one of my favourite children's books "This is London" by M Sasek. After flipping through the pages for a little while she decided that she would draw pictures of Trafalgar Square (complete with pigeons), Big Ben, a double decker bus and a guard from Buckingham Palace - chatting to the Queen no less!

So here they are...

Ava (yellow hair) poses in front of Nelson's Column with our friend Amy (brown hair).

And before anyone comments on the MAJOR mistake in this picture, Ava draws a happy sun on almost every picture no matter how grey the place is in reality!