{Girly party plans}

I am a planner. I may not finish all the details until the last minute, but I start planning well in advance. I have not always been this way. I became this way after having kids. I am 9 months pregnant with my 3rd. This is my 2nd daughter, and my poor son is stuck in between 2 girls. This little girl is due a month before my older daughter's 5th birthday. So I definitely need to get some planning underway for her upcoming birthday party.

I feel like 5 is such a big deal of a birthday! I mean, its a big step, you start Kindergarten, work on tying shoes, help more with chores, get an allowance, can ride a bus, are going somewhere with out your parents or some form of constant supervision. It kinda scares the bejeezus outta me!! My baby girl is growing up. 

And she is so grown up. The phrases she says, the way she dresses and carries herself. She wants to help us cook and is a HUGE help with her brother. Seeing her write her name and draw pictures (that look like what she says it is lol) just blow my mind. How can this even be possible, ya know!

So I figure we need to do some "grown-up girl" stuff. I am going to take her for her first mani/pedi. We are going to have a formal tea at a tea room, or if we can't find one that does what I am envisioning, we will wait to we visit my sister in Richmond and she and I will take my daughter to the Jefferson Hotel for High tea. In that case I will take her to the melting pot for a cheese/chocolate course- my husband doesn't want to miss that part. :-) Any other ideas for grown-up girl stuff I can do with her? I know to me, this already seems like a lot for our budget, but we are also going to Orlando in May and we will go to Disney for at least 1 day (she's gone every year, so we just want to hit the highlights) and that is what we are asking the rest of the family to contribute towards instead of buying toys and clothes that she doesn't need anymore of.

But you know, every child wants a party with their friends. So we will do something basic with just cake and ice cream and let the kids play. Well she wants a Princess Tea party. She has several boy "friends" so not sure how this is going to go over with inviting them to a girlie girly girl party, cause they are in the yuck girl stuff stage, so we may be adjusting it from a full on girly party and roll with it. SO as I was playing around with making cupcake topper images as I did for my son's tractor themed party (you just can't find Allis Chalmers and Farmall toppers like you can John Deere) I found this to be easy to make.

 I wanted to make them girly but not So fru fru pink. I am also thinking of doing some mustache style ones too for the boys. Her best friend is a boy and we just can't Not invite him.
A basic tutorial for these, and I apologize that it is short and not as detailed with pictures as I would like, but I wanted to share something. Please feel free to email me or comment with questions and I will be glad to help clear it up.
I started in Microsoft Publisher. I inserted a shape first, and just used a circle and eye-balled the size. These are approximately 1 inch circles. Then I googled around some free clipart to download, or you could insert images or pictures that you already have. I inserted the image, pattern, or color into the shape. In some cases I had to send it to the back. You can do that by right-clicking the mouse and it gives you that option. Sometimes I had to bring things forward or backwards to adjust the size to fit better. You can also add text to insert a number or letter or name or whatever you want. I then just copied the image over several times to create a line of them, and then down to make a full page. 
Then I decided I didn't want them all one image, and decided to change what image was inserted by row to change it up. Like I said, I know this is a really rough explanation, but it really was simple. I played around with publisher for the first time with just this project. What have you got to lose, its free after all. Oh and I also learned how to watermark something on publisher this time as well lol.