I feel like I learned something in my first three years of hosting children’s birthday parties – they were exhausting the way I was doing them, and I needed to make a change! I was focused so much on every little detail of each party, I hardly had time to enjoy them myself. I remember that after each of my son’s birthday parties I was so tired I needed a vacation after they were finished because I put so much work into them.

When it came time to plan my son’s forth birthday, I decided to try something different. I wanted to focus more on enjoying the party myself with my son, so I made changes in the way I threw this year’s party.

First of all, when it came to invitations Minted took care of most of the work for me. I easily picked a template I loved that was customizable, and the best part was that they allowed me to add a return addresses to the envelopes. I ordered the birthday invitations, and the thank you cards as well. Something small like having the return addresses printed, and having the thank you cards personalized saved so much time!

I also loved the way Minted sent everything. It all came in a protected box and was personalized with information on the designer of the invitations, and a hand written seal from the person who packaged the invites.

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 As you can see from the invites, we decided to have a movie-themed party! I decided that I didn’t want to worry about making a main table for the party like I always do, or rent somewhere that I would need to decorate the night before or the morning of, so we decided to rent a movie theatre!

Landmark Theatre offers a birthday party package where you can researve seating for your party and have use of a party room after, but because we had so many toddlers to invite who may have been seeing a move for the first time, we decided to rent a whole theatre for our party.

This was amazing for a couple reasons – first of all, no need to decorate, and no need to worry about the clean up! Everything would be taken care of for us which was great.

All of my son’s friends and family were in one room, and we could be as loud and unruly as we wanted! It also gave us the opportunity to invite whole families who wanted to come out as well. We decided to screen The Angry Birds Movie, and it was something even the parents could enjoy.

What we also loved was that we actually had the whole movie theatre to ourselves! We had the party at 10:00am, so the theatre wasn’t even open to the public yet so we had the whole place to ourselves which was pretty cool.

 
 

 
 Landmark Theatre creates personalized tickets for your event as well, so not only was it one less thing for me to worry about, but the kids could bring these tickets to the concession stand for their own kid’s snack pack for the movie.

 
 

 
 Having the party at a movie theatre was the perfect solution to my issue with obsessing over every little Pinterest-type detail.

Finally I had the chance to enjoy the party with everyone else, and I felt like this was the type of party that everyone could enjoy instead of it just involving kids activities.

I hardly spent any time preparing for the party at all! The only thing I had to handle was the treat bags, which I kept super simple.

I received a cute printable from Crea8ive Design and made little candy bags, and the treat bags were sourced by Party City. I didn’t even stuff them because my son actually really wanted to do it!

 
 

 
 

 
 
We had a great birthday party for my son, and I think I learned a super valuable lesson that I wish I learned a bit earlier. I really don’t want to look back at my son’s birthday’s and think about how much work they were. I really want to remember how much fun they were, and I think my little epiphany paid off!

 

 

 
 

Item’s in this post were provided to me for review, but all opinions are fabulously my own.