How to turn your family into Cheeseheads.

You may already know this, but mr. is from Utah.  His whole family lives in the west, mostly Utah and Idaho.  His parents and siblings all live in his hometown.  His three best friends live in Utah.  His cousins - though scattered somewhat to South Dakota or Wyoming are mainly in, yep, Utah and Idaho.  So I, again, had the same problem I did when throwing El's surprise party, namely: how do I include all of his loved ones who can't make it to Wisco?

If you have the same problem, I've got an idea for you!  Now, in this case, I used what I term "fan packets", but you could definitely alter this to fit any themed party you have.

First off, I found a few things that were "packer fan appropriate" - and I made some things too.

Like these fan glasses:

I got the glasses at Target in the dollar section.  I colored them yellow so they'd turn green and decorated some with washi tape, some with fingernail polish in fun designs.  I got the idea here:

via

If you're an avid Packer fan (are there any of you out there?) then you know what a big deal Aaron Rodgers' facial hair is (or has been in the past at least.)  So I looked up some images of him and used them for inspiration for my "Aaron Rodgers Stache Collection".

I traced around the mustache templates on tan card stock, colored them in with brown sharpie, cut them all out, hot glued them to sticks, and tied the three different kinds together with twine and a label - so there could be no mistake.  Because I drew the staches on tan paper, when you hold them up to your face the spaces in between the "hair" are virtually invisible.

I also made some speech bubbles the same way - printed out some balloon shapes on card stock, cut them out, hot glued them to sticks.

Then I put everything together.

My stache collection, the glasses, the speech bubbles, homemade beaded necklaces in green, yellow and white, and the store bought goodies which included: green and gold wigs, green and gold mardi gras beads, green and yellow pom poms - all from the dollar store.

I packed them in large manila envelopes with a letter explaining the party and the theme, telling everyone it was his golden birthday, and that they should use the items to take a Packer picture, then email it to me.  

Some people went all out and added some packer elements of their own!

Like the cheeseheads, the Packer shirts and scarf and the talking mini Packer helmet.  Ha! His aunt made sure to let us know in her speech bubble, in no uncertain terms, that they are Bears fans.  Haha!  I know!  BEARS fans!  Isn't that funny???  I didn't think they existed...

I printed all the photos out and used washi tape in green and yellow to put them up on our railing.  I put them right next to the "photo booth" area, kind of like inspiration for everyone else at the party.

We're going to incorporate them into our scrapbook, too.  Just think of all the goofy stuff you could ask your long distance family to do!

*Be sure to check the right sidebar for all the fun parties I link to!