Black, white, yellow, purple…green?! This holiday season it’s all about equality and celebrating who you are inside and out. One of our very popular vendors, Noteworthy Collections, has done just that with their new line of festive Holiday Invitations which feature some of the many styles and cultures of the world. If you’re hosting a holiday party this year, you’ll find the perfect holiday card inside the Noteworthy holiday collection. These brand new holiday designs celebrate being African American, Asian American, Blonde, Brunette or even a Redhead! There’s no reason why your holiday party invitation shouldn’t look like you or celebrate who you are.

Some of the designs you’ll see in this multi cultural collection feature girls in Santa dresses sitting on large ornaments while sipping on a cocktail. The collection even has an expecting mother holiday invitation which is perfect for baby showers during the holiday season or for those families hosting a party while they are expecting. Going green for the holiday season? We also have an adorable go-green holiday invitation which features a girl in a peace sign t-shirt standing in front of a large globe of the earth.

Take a look at some of the adorable multicultural holiday invitations below…

Like what you see? We do too! These fun, creative, sassy and chic invitations are sure to spark some festivity at your upcoming holiday event. Remember that the holidays are right around the corner. It’s never too early to start planning to make sure you have the cutest holiday invites on the block!

It’s time to play stump the expert again! We had a customer email us over the weekend asking how to specifically word a formal invitation’s time when you have a starting time and an ending time. My first gut-instinct was that you never put an ending time on a formal invitation…you only put the starting time. However, what if a situation yields itself to have an ending time necessary? For example, if a reception location hosts weddings all day long and you only have a four hour time period. We all know that in this economy, time is money, thus sometimes an end time is needed.

Let’s start by remembering the time table for what time means on a formal invitation and what time coordinates with which phrase, “morning, afternoon or evening”…

Morning 12:00 AM – 11:59 AM
Afternoon 12:00 PM – 5:59 PM
Evening 6:00 PM – 11:59 PM

When writing out the time on a formal invitation, you’ll need to use whole and half hours, completely written out. For example, 11:00 AM would be written as “at eleven o’clock in the morning”. If you have to use an end time, you will need to keep use of the “in the morning/evening” phrase at the end of the time. For example, 6:00 PM – 10:00 PM would be written out as “from six o’clock until ten o’clock in the evening”.

The customer I was assisting had an interesting situation to which her party began in the morning and ended mid-afternoon. When this occurs you must formally write the time as, “from ten o’clock in the morning until two o’clock in the afternoon”. This long winded sentence is not a favorite of mine either, however if you’re going to write the time out correctly, proper form must be used. On the alternative, you could always revert back to a more casual time-writing, “10:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.”

Have more etiquette questions? Feel free to visit our complete invitation etiquette guide on InvitationBox.com!

Planning a surprise party can be extremely fun, sneaky and rewarding for the honoree! However, they can also be a very daunting task in which the host is trying to plan a fun event without anyone knowing while trying to make sure that nobody spills the beans! At InvitationBox.com one of our most popular adult birthday party themes that we see are surprise birthday parties. Most are for big birthdays for those celebrating their 30th, 40th or 50th birthday parties, yet we’ve even seen some teens host surprise birthday parties for their 16th or 21st birthdays.

Below is a fun list of helpful tips to assist you with planning a surprise party:

1 – Keep it to yourself! If you want the party to remain a secret, it’s best not to share too many details with friends or guests.

8 – Mail your invitations out about 3-4 weeks before your event. You want to give plenty of time for everyone to attend, but not too much time that the secret is leaked!

Ready to plan your own surprise party? Check out our entire collection of Surprise Party invitations at InvitationBox. Have a story to share?! We’d love to hear what made your surprise party special, memorable or fun!

Fall has come in and a world full of holiday events and parties will soon be planned. Make dinner-time fun during the holidays with a personalized placemat from our holiday collection. These 12 x 18 inch placemats are printed on 100 pound card stock which is then laminated in a thick plastic outer-covering to protect and kid-proof your mat from spills, water and food. Each placemat also has a fun, patterned or coordinating design on the back.

Some of our newest holiday placemat designs feature snowmen for the winter, a Santa face for those celebrating Christmas or our adorable Hanukkah placemat which features a Menorah for those celebrating the festival of lights. Each placemat features a fun graphic and plenty of room for you to add your child’s name or a fun holiday phrase. These placemats are great for decorating your holiday table, welcoming a new member to your family or as gift items for the holiday seasons. Surprise your holiday dinner guests with a placemat made for each attending guest as they arrive. Below are some of our favorite holiday placemat designs…

Thinking ahead for future holidays? We also have placemats for St. Patrick’s Day, Halloween, Easter, Mardi Gras or Valentine’s Day. The fun doesn’t stop there either. We also have non-holiday placemats with patterns, kids designs, adult designs or other fun or whimsical scenes which help make mealtime fun. No kids in the house? No problem! We also have an exclusive line of pet placemats which work perfectly to protect the area around your pet’s food bowls.

The holiday season is vastly approaching and for large corporations that want to send out a holiday greeting, searching for the perfect holiday card is well underway. Our Birchcraft collection of Global and International Holiday Cards features a large collection of patriotic and peace-wishing greeting cards which feature truly striking and touching messages. When in the corporate world sending a holiday card, you may want to choose a holiday greeting card that is non-holiday specific as to not segregate one particular holiday or religion. You also may have clients from different countries who may or may not celebrate the holidays.

The main focus in this collection of holiday cards is to spread well-being, wish peace on earth and create unity while thanking your clients, co-workers and customers for their continued business and support. One of my favorite global holiday cards from the Birchcraft collection is the International Wishes of Peace Holiday Card, shown below. This festively striking card features a black background with a thin gold border. A large gold ornament of the world adorns the bottom of the card below rows of peaceful wishes in our world’s unique languages. “Peace on Earth” is the pre-printed sentiment at the bottom of the card, printed in your corporation’s native language. Inside the card you can customize your own personal greeting for your clients, or even add a company logo.

Need something a bit more colorful? Birchcraft has a multitude of other global designs which feature flags of various nations, doves flying about the globe, logo themed art and world designs. They even have global holiday greeting cards which feature a 2011 calendar inside the card. Browse the entire collection of global and international cards here!

Brand new holiday invitation designs are pouring into InvitationBox just as fast as we’re putting them out. While browsing through our brand new designs I found a holiday party invitation design for a holiday party theme I was not extremely familiar with and HAD to share. It’s called a White Elephant Exchange Party – the term “white elephant” sounded familiar to me, but I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it meant. After doing some research, I found a really cool party idea that can add some spark to your next holiday event.

A white elephant gift exchange is also known as “Yankee Swap”. Traditionally a white elephant is known as a gift item lying around your house that is not valuable, something that is unattractive or an item you’d like to re-gift as it was an unwanted or unuseful gift…basically the gift that keeps on giving because nobody wants to receive it! A white elephant gift is pretty much a gag gift or something undesirable. When hosting your white elephant gift exchange party you can ask your guests to bring a gag gift or an actual fun gift to exchange or swap with the other guests.

How to play…
Ask each guest to bring the following…
-Give guests a party theme for their gift (holiday, liquor, household items, etc.)
-Advise a price range for the gift
-Ask guests to wrap gift with wrapping paper or a gift bag
-Put small gifts or gift cards in an envelope (sealed)
-Do not put a gift tag stating who the gift is from

How to play…
-Have everyone sit in a circle around the pile of gifts
-Choose numbers to see who goes first, go clockwise or start from youngest to oldest
-On the first turn, player # 1 chooses a gift and unwraps it
-On the second turn, player #2 may take player #1′s gift or choose a new gift. If #2 steals, #1 gets to open a new wrapped gift.
-On the third turn, player #3 may steal from 1 or 2 or open a new gift
-The exchange ends when the last player steals or opens the last gift.

Sound like a party you’d like to host? We think this idea would be great for adult holiday parties or even corporate parties for small to medium sized groups. Noteworthy Collections has even come out with a white elephant exchange party invitation to match! Check out the brand new design above which will be available at InvitationBox.com in the upcoming week!

Forget the ghosts and goblins…WITCHES rule Halloween on this creepy night! Perhaps you’re not ‘coupled up” or you simply need a night away from the boys or the kids…Halloween is the perfect time to get together with your girlfriends and boil up some notorious trouble!

Our vendors have been designing the sassiest Halloween invitations yet this year which will be perfect for your Halloween girls night out! When planning your spooky girls night, ask everyone to come as they aren’t! Choose to dress up as a themed group or have each girl be creative and go out on her own to create a fun, spooky, sassy or sexy Halloween costume. Ask all of your friends to bring their costumes to the host’s house so that everyone can get ready together, help each other with makeup and sip on some creepy cocktails while doing it! Below I have listed a fun Halloween cocktail recipe for you, which I found on about.com, called the Bayou Slime…

This ‘toxic’ and creepy cocktail is an interesting concoction which resembles a muddy swamp yet tastes similar to a yummy mojito! What could be better? Mix 2 parts Cruzan Dark Rum with 6-8 fresh mint leaves, 1/2 spiced cordial syrup and one egg white – yes, an egg white! The egg white actually creates the foamy white layer you see at the top. Shake all ingredients together and top with the mint leaves and have a fun cocktail to share!

When planning your girls Halloween night, decide if you want to party in the safe indoors or venture out into the spooky city to party at the bars, restaurants or see a concert. Choose a fun and girly Halloween invitation which coordinates with your party style and personality. Below are some of our favorite girls-only Halloween invitations…

Got a fun or wild girls night Halloween party idea or story to share? Post it here and let us girls in on your fun and spooky Halloween night adventures!

A picture says a thousand words…we say it says more! At InvitationBox we tend to celebrate our holidays a few months ahead so that we are prepared to offer you the most innovative and modern one-of-a-kind designs for the holidays. Our vendors are vastly contacting us with brand new designs that we can’t wait to share.

One of our newest products to hit the site is the Paper so Pretty collection of digital photograph holiday cards. These brand new designs feature this vendor’s most modern designs and color combinations yet. Christmas isn’t just about red and green anymore! Their newest holiday photo designs feature animal print stripes, strategically placed polka dots, tropical flowers, circle burst dots and formal damask patterns. Each design has a holiday hue which gives you that festive feeling, however the vendor has really outdone themselves by adding a bit of personality into the color or scheme of the design so that you can make your holiday card yours.

Below are some of the newest Paper so Pretty designs that you’ll see this holiday season. My personal favorite is the middle card, Zebra and Dots, which really adds a little modern flare to a holiday greeting card…

Remember that personalizing your holiday digital photo card is easy with our online uploading system. Simply choose your card and upload a plethora of photos to see which of your photos looks best on your chosen card. You can crop the photo, rotate it and even change the color from color to black and white or sepia. Check out the entire Paper so Pretty Holiday Collection at InvitationBox.com!

Double, double, toil and trouble! Fires burn and cauldrons bubble! Halloween is slightly over a month away so it’s time to start planning your upcoming kids Halloween event. At InvitationBox.com we not only have adorable kids Halloween party invitations, but we also carry kids Halloween costumes by Mullins Square, making InvitationBox your one-stop shop for your Halloween Needs. Below I’ve paired a couple of our most popular kids Halloween party invitations along with an adorable toddler baby costume to match!

Little Pumpkin Halloween Party Invitation by IB Designs & Pumpkin Baby Costume by Mullins Square - This adorable Little Pumpkin invitation by IB Designs features a cartoon drawing of a little boy dressed up in a pumpkin costume, carrying a brown bag of candy from trick-or-treating. He stands on a brown and tan background making his rounds on Halloween night. Pair this invitation with our Pumpkin costume which features a round orange pumpkin body with a happy jack-o-lantern face. Top it off with a green stem hat for this adorable costume.

Trick Don’t Treat Kids Halloween Invitation by IB Designs & Kitten Baby Costume by Mullins Square – This fun kids Halloween party invitation features a night scene of three kids dressed in a witch costume, cat and ghost while trick-or-treating on Halloween night. Each trick or treater holds a pumpkin candy pail and walks along a black road with a navy sky background. Pair this adorable kids Halloween invitation with the Kitten baby Halloween costume which features a purple bodied cat with a pink ribbon on her collar. A purple kitty hat tops it off.

Batty Halloween Invitation by Inviting Company & Bat Baby Halloween Costume by Mullins Square – Here batty, batty! This fun Halloween invitation features a black night scene with a large white moon and orange bats with fangs flying throughout. Pair this with the bat baby costume which features a black tuxedo body with black wings and a black bat hat. This creepy pairing is perfect for this spooky Halloween holiday.

Check out all of our Halloween costumes and Halloween party invitations at InvitationBox.com!

We’ve all been there…two weeks before your party date and the host decides she is no longer the host and you’re left with hosting a party in little to no time and don’t even have invitations yet! Or, it’s the case where you’re so busy that you completely forgot to order invitations and the party is just a few weeks away!

I thought I’d write a blog today in light of so many phone calls we’ve been receiving lately about parties in less than a week or two or questions about our processing times. When shopping at InvitationBox.com, all of our products have different processing times depending on the vendor, location of the vendor, card stock quality or method of printing chosen. For example, a light weight or digitally processed card will have a much shorter processing time than a layered card with thermography (raised) printing. When shopping online, click on the blue and white “Delivery Time” tab which will show you the processing time for the item, plus a UPS map to indicate how long shipping will take once your order is in transit. The delivery time tab also explains that if you have a proof, your processing time will begin after your proof approval.

A good rule of thumb is to order your invitations approximately three weeks before you want to mail them out. This will give you time to choose the perfect invitation, go through our proofing process and wait for your invitations to be shipped to you. You will then need to allow yourself time to stamp, stuff and address your envelopes, and time for your guests to receive their invitations!

Moral of this story? The early bird gets the worm! Planning ahead can save you a few headaches when ordering invitations and can also ensure that you have an un-stressed party planning experience. It will also save you a plethora of money on expedited services such as rush processing or upgraded shipping fees. Not you? No problem…if you’re late on the ball, feel free to call our customer service and they can point you into the right direction in receiving a quick-ship order that can arrive to your door in just a few short days.