Abi's 6th birthday

With all the chaos in our lives with the new baby, I still had to plan a great birthday party for Abigail. She is turning 6 this year. I also wanted to keep it simple and inexpensive. The first thing I decided was that with the new baby I did not want to spend the whole day decorating and cleaning up. So we decided not to do it at home. We chose to do it at the local gymnastics gym, James Academy of Gymnastics. This means no entertaining kids, not a lot of decorating and virtually no clean up. The next step was what kind of party. Well, Abigail has been requesting an LSU birthday since after last year's party. So LSU it is. We got the purple and gold plates and napkins. And her Maw Janie bought Abi an LSU cheerleader outfit to wear. But how to invite everyone to the event? Well invitations of course. I usually order invites online at Etsy, but lately I have been giving my hand at it. I don't use the best software, and I am not always the most creative, but I think I can do the job and it saves me at least $10 or so. So I created the invitations at home and had them printed on cardstock at Office Depot. We mailed these in purple envelopes. Next on the to-do list was a cake. Last year I attempted to do the great shaped cake from a local vendor. Well I will never spend $100 on a birthday cake for kids again. The baker insisted she only uses fresh cakes which is good if your cake is not shaped like a strawberry. Anyways off of that rant, I decided we would go with the local grocer's cakes. She decided she wanted a "regular cake" quarter sheet that looked like an LSU football field. The party is around lunch so hot dog via the crockpot (Pinterest) will be served. Finally, a thank you gift for the attendants. Back to Pinterest for idea. Well we found the best. Tiger tails made of marshmallows coved in orange candy melts with black icing tiger stripes. Cannot wait to post all the pictures and let you know how it all came out tomorrow.