Parenting Blog

On Throwing A Very Special Sweet Sixteen Party

It would be too easy to blame the walls, to blame the regressive nature of what I swear was a dignified brown paint fifteen years ago, for our lack of entertaining.

Over time, that evocative brown became emotionless beige and while we adventure together outside of the house, from Gaudi’s fractured tile playground of Barcelona to the ancient whitewashed villages of Greece, our home life in Pennsylvania suffered a kind of stagnation that matched the walls of our family room. The scratchy eggplant & green furniture, slowly torn to shreds by multiple cats, didn’t help liven things up either.

No more excuses.

Our baby is soon to be sixteen and with this season’s extreme teal makeover complete, it’s time to celebrate with a very special sweet sixteen party for our home, for our first big project as a couple, for our original baby girl.

Like with every new baby, the early years were covered in a lot of brown and many mistakes were made.

The sofa and the love seat grew weary from upset tummies and cracker crumbles yet we were all happy and comfortable with how time passed. As the teenage yeas were ushered in however, we each quietly believed something was changing in our family’s mindset, and we believed the changes were going to be so very good for all of us.

What was once familiar and filled with warmth had become expressionless, the energy dipping on flat feet. If teens are good for one thing it is keeping you on your toes, ready for bold, dramatic changes, bobbing and weaving with new ideas, thoughts, emotions and a natural inclination to rebel against complacency.

Viva la teen years!

Last month, we had our family room stripped of it’s boring brown and replaced, from floor to ceiling and on all the walls, with the boldest of teals. We didn’t even dip a toe into the water with a brush stroke tucked behind frame, we went headfirst into things because that’s how the teenage years work. It just happens and you react on the fly.

Extreme Teal Family Room Makeover

We didn’t stop at the walls! A semi-transparent white stain was applied to the brown wood IKEA buffet, the woodsy shadow boxes, the hutch, and we went dark grey with a massive new sofa, ottoman, and chaise lounge set, accented with teal and white pillows.

Extreme Teal Family Room Makeover

Our baby is all grown up and we’re throwing a family party to coronate her arrival upon her sweet sixteen!

Because a very special sweet sixteen birthday party deserves more than a hastily typed email invitation and because being a teen means zigging when society zags, we are eschewing the disposable nature of modernity for something tangible. In sending thick, custom paper birthday party invitations for this sweet sixteen party, we are effectively choosing the glorious equivalent of a double gatefold LP and 180 gram vinyl over a sound file figment of our collective imagination. We are hip, we are cool, we are thumbing our noses at the establishment.

OWTK Basic Invite Sweet Sixteen

We partnered with Basic Invite to custom design a teal revolution invitation for a sweet sixteen party to remember always because your child, or your home, only turns 16 once. The occasion needs gold foil, raised lettering, glamorous envelopes and a unique style that can be felt, held, and held onto for years.

OWTK Basic Invite Sweet Sixteen Website Screenshot

Whether you are plotting a sweet sixteen shindig for your home, a 5th birthday party for your daughter, an 85th for grandma or anything from a festive holiday party to graduation, Basic Invite has a classy and cool invitation to make your party pop before the guests even arrive. Every single thing is customizable! –> from almost unlimited colors to so many rad fonts, to the placement of each line of text to the paper itself — EVERYTHING down to the over 40 colors and patterns for the insides of the peel and seal envelopes is totally up to you and your creative imagination.

It’s entirely possible that designing our teal and gold party invitations on Basic Invite will be a more enjoyable experience for me than the party itself, but that’s probably just the introvert in me talking.

Probably.

OWTK Basic Invite Sweet Sixteen 2

Basic Invite is a party invitation maker that’s anything but basic, it is the easy-to-use DIY platform capable of turning your next party into a memorable event from the word go all the way through to the sincere thank you’s a couple of weeks later.

Give Basic Invite a try now, order a custom sample of the invitation you design, and learn about the free address collection and envelope printing service.

Check out more of what’s possible with Basic Invite:

*OWTK was compensated by Basic Invite for this story. All opinions expressed above are honest and unbiased, as always. Our brown walls did become more and more boring since moving in, we have been in our home nearly 16 years, and EVERYTHING is teal, white and grey now and it is so bold and beautiful, just like our teen!

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