Bowling Ball Tags

This year was the first year Nathan has friends his age to celebrate his birthday with. Previously, we didn't know any kids his own age, or hang out with his classmates outside of school, so Nathan has always celebrated with people about 2 decades (or more) older than him.

Then, when we got here, Nathan got to know a lot of kids, and I finally got time to arrange play dates and such.

So when we started planning for his birthday, we decided to have a proper birthday party for him this year.

I wanted to have something in our home since we finally had the space to, but as we continued planning, we realized what a huge expense and effort it would be, never mind that we would have to get ready for a long trip at the same time. After a lot of thought, we decided it would be better to have the party outside our home.

We eventually decided on a bowling party.

But when I gave up the idea of having a party at home, I also gave up all the fun creative (potentially theme-y) stuff that comes with it - the decorations, the food.

So I quickly made some bowling ball gift tags to go on Nathan's loot bags as my creative bit.

I punched out black circles and punched three little holes with my crop-a-dile.

Then stamped on some 6s using Mr. Huey white because I didn't have a good white ink that would show up on black paper. At first the filled in areas bothered me, but now I kind of like that grungy look.

On the back, I wrote a simple thank you note in white pen.

And hung them on the bags with twine.

The one with a star is Nathan's but I think if I were to do it again, I'd put a star behind every ball. Looks like the ball is smashing into something, don't you think?