Cooking Party Invitations : It's TIME to Celebrate!

My sis and I had so much fun making Monkey's cooking party invitations!  Well, I had so much fun.  Guess I can't speak for my sister...

I love to make my own invites to save budget money for fun things like the kitchen timer we attached to each invite.

I fell in love with these timers from World Market back in the spring when I first spotted them, and I have been watching for them to go on sale.  They finally did, and I was able to snag them for $1.50 apiece!  See, it pays to plan ahead!

We found 4 different types of timers (pear, carrot, strawberry, and lettuce), so I wanted to incorporate those words into the invite.  This is what we came up with:

It's TIME to celebrate

Monkey's 7th Birthday

LETTUCE bake up a BERRY good time

Join us

(date)

(time)

Wear something you won't CARROT all about getting messy

Take a PEAR of cupcakes for your siblings at home

I often get the sibling question, "How do you handle whether or not to invite siblings?"  I find it hard to leave out siblings with our close friends, because we are also close to the siblings.  However, for this party, I gave Monkey a 10 child limitation (crucial for a cooking party, IMHO).  But...I felt kinda bad about having to exclude siblings, so I decided that we would send home cupcakes for them.  As a side note, since we tend to have parties at home (which are smaller and more intimate), we usually have a park and cupcake play date on our girls' actual birthdays and we invite everyone in the class, siblings and all.  That's definitely a "more the merrier" occasion.

When it comes to school friends, I feel it is perfectly fine to only invite the friend and gracefully ask for siblings to stay home ("Due to space limitations, we cannot accommodate siblings this time.  Thank you for understanding").  I have a friend who has decided not to attend anymore parties unless both her girls are invited, because it leads to hurt feelings.  I can see both sides of the issue, and it's definitely tricky, but I feel like I can make a party more special if it is a smaller group of kids.

What do you think?