Bolling With 5: "Take Me Out To The Ball Game" ~ Invitation!

Well, our firstborn baby is officially double digits. Turning a decade old, in my opinion, deserved a really special birthday party! Out of the 9 possible years that Ty could have a birthday party, he has had 8 HUGE parties. As a matter of fact, one of Tyson's party recaps is on youtube and our video has over 107,000 hits. Click here to check it out. Last year, we went to Disney World, so we chose not have a party for Ty.

Living in a small city, such a Roanoke/Salem, poses very limited venues for birthday parties. I personally prefer NOT to duplicate party locations, so planning a party for Ty was challenging. We are in the dead center of baseball season, so my brother suggested seeing if the Salem Red Socks would allow Ty to have a party and possibly throw the first pitch. PERFECT idea! We have never been to a Red Socks game, much less have a party there!!!

I sent an email to the Vice President of the Red Socks and he informed me that they actually have party packages. He put me in touch with the woman in charge of the parties and BAM! the party was booked! Chelsey, the party coordinator, helped me narrow down our party package. We chose to do the best package possible. It was called the "MVP" package. The package included invitations, but they were out of them. So... in return, Chelsey offered me t-shirts for FREE (which I wanted anyways, but there would have been an additional cost). She still was able to send me a jpeg for the invitation . The jpeg looked like the below photo. It was my responsibility to fill in the blanks. However, that didn't cut it for me.

Instead, I used one of my favorite programs and added to the invite.

"Batters Up!"

It's time for some fun!

Come round the bases with Ty

To celebrate his 10th Birthday!

Wear the shirt enclosed

AND arrive hungry!!!

We will be eating a light lunch

and celebrating with cupcakes.

During the game, we will pig out

on ballpark food.

This party is a SURPRISE.

Please do NOT mention it to Ty.

Arrive PROMPTLY @ 2:45 pm.

Ty will arrive at 3:00 pm.

I love the way it turned out.

Of course, the paper invite was NOT enough to get our party guests enthusiastic about coming! This is where the t-shirts came into play! I am SOOO glad the box office was out of invitations. That really worked out in my favor!

I rolled up each t-shirt like you see!

I love that the t-shirt had the words #kids, #salemsocks #salemvirginia and #2015 on it!

Ty was born in 2005. Ty turned 10 in 2015!!!!

To complete this invitation, I needed a way to deliver it! I did NOT deliver the invitation until school let out, for the weekend, on Friday, May 9th. I wanted this party to remain a surprise and had I passed out the invitations sooner, I KNEW the secret would leak. Parents and guests were on board. NO SPILLING THE BEANS!

I delivered the invitation just like this...

Cute, right?!?!?

To attain the look of the baseball bag, I just bought white gift bags from the dollar tree. Printed out each guests name, using a red socks font, and hand drew baseball laces onto the bag. I sealed the bag with one red/blue tissue paper and baseball ribbon.