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Puppet Show Box Completed!
This is about the point in party-planning where I start to get on everybody’s nerves. Even though I have been told by reliable truth-telling friends that I am not as annoying as I think I am, I imagine myself as one of those crazy lunatic reality stars who runs around yelling at everyone because they don’t “get my vision.”
Of course part of the problem with people “not getting my vision” is that I am in a hyper state of brain-activity where I do most of my communicating in my head and I forget that you all can’t hear that. It’s loud and clear to me, what’s your problem?!!
Anyway, I cannot complain about party stress because it is 100% self-inflicted and I love it. Naturally, it drives Toby bananas. He is counting down the minutes until it is all over and he can have his quiet life back without giant green boxes in the living room and a sewing machine whirring away at 2 o’clock in the morning. Of course, you know the minute it is all over I will be planning the next one IN MY HEAD! Bwahahahhhahaahha!
Things are rapidly progressing. Bethany brought me a bunch of her old moving boxes and they have been sliced and diced into a puppet show theater. Annalie and Bug helped with the painting.
fairy mural to match the bunk bed I was completely sick of it. My nieces thought their bunk bed was great but every time I walked into their room or saw a photo of it, it made me wince. So bright! My eyes, my eyes!
I think I picked this color again because on the little card it was next to two other greens and it looked subtle and just right in comparison. It wasn’t too dark, it wasn’t too light, it was smack dab in the middle. Now I’m thinking without those other two greens it looks like some kind of Shrek Drano. But whatever. Three-year-olds will love it.
Speaking of not being a perfectionist and letting things go, the awning was a complete mess. It looks great from far away but I really screwed it up. The weather has been quite warm and dry (perfect for painting outdoors on our patio) and because of this my paint dried almost as quickly as I painted it. This resulted in way too much texture. Sort of like when you’re painting your toenails and you accidentally smudge the paint and then you paint another coat on top thinking you’ll just cover that smudge up but instead you end up with a giant mess. Yeah.
It’s okay though. Nobody will notice. I only mention it because I want you to know that painting for me is just as frustrating as it is for everybody else. I always do everything wrong. I just don’t give up. I keep plowing through.
The puppet-show box is done. All I need to do is sew the black curtain that goes behind the green curtain, paint the little hanging scenes for our script and…all the rest of the stuff that I need to do like grocery shopping and housecleaning. No stress at all! Hahhahhahahah. There is way too much still to do.
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The We’re-so-much-better!-Now-I-can-tell-you-what-I-did-last-weekend! post
The sun came out today. It was so nice. Still chilly, but just seeing the bright sky with dynamic clouds lit up with real honest-to-goodness sunshine was like waking up from a three day long shiver-fest. Which actually I was suffering from. I’ve never had that happen before when I’ve gotten sick. Shivering? Freezing cold for three days straight? It was really terrible and weird.
Bug and I are sooooooo much better. We’re still stuck with the snoctopusses living in our sinuses and we cough every other word but at least we can think clear thoughts again. For a while there I thought I was going to take up residence on the couch. I didn’t even check my email. You know it’s bad when I go missing off the internet. I usually eat colds for breakfast. They hardly ever slow me down but this one…it was a mean mother-buster. Mean, green and you just better hope you’re not around me while I’m still contagious.
Bla bla bla…I don’t need to complain about the common cold. You guys have all had it before and heard this a thousand times. Cold schmold. What you really want to hear about is my sister-in-law’s thirtieth birthday party right?
Wooo Hoooo! You only turn thirty once. My family has been talking about this birthday all year but poor CC, just like every year when her birthday finally came around we were all strapped for cash, out of time and feeling like big clods of dirt for not planning something really extravagant. It sucks having your birthday so near Christmas.
When I was trying to pull some kind of plan out thin air, I asked CC if she’d ever really had a big birthday party growing up and how her parents pulled it off. She thought about it for a little while and then said she didn’t think she’d ever had a big birthday bash. Here she is related to me, the party-planning queen, and she’s never had a birthday bash?!! That is just sad sad sad. I should go dunk my head in a bucket of pig slop.
So we thought and we thought and we thought and nothing really happened. Being the super-capable person that CC is, she said she could have a party at her house and we could all cook Chinese food. It was a good idea but I was thinking that’s not really how a birthday party is supposed to go down. It’s bad enough she cooked and cleaned for her own ten-year wedding anniversary. We needed to do something really fun and different and it couldn’t be at CC’s house. But where? None of us wanted to drag the kids out to a fancy dinner. But we didn’t want to leave them behind either. She’s their mom after all. My house was out. My mom’s house was out…
Then I got a wicked idea. How about we have a party at Bethany‘s house! You all know how much I love the Actuallys’ house. That place is made for having parties. If I lived there I would have had forty of them by now. But you know how it is. Some people aren’t really the party-throwing types. I perfectly understand that. Now how could I break this news to Bethany?
Um, hi. Can I have a party at your house?
Hahahahahahhahahhahaahhaaaaa. I’m such a dork. Thankfully, Bethany is a dork too because after she laughed at me for about twenty minutes, she said, “Sure! Why not?”
And that is how we came to have CC’s 30th birthday party at Bethany’s house. It was great.
We had Chinese food at a restaurant that was not very expensive.
Bethany made the cake (of course). It was delish. She killed us with chocolate.
We painted pottery at a local pottery-painting store and then we crashed in one of their many guest rooms. Technically they have one guest room but that’s one more than any of us have so it was quite a luxury.
Then the next morning we opened presents and lived happily ever after…
Well until Bug and I came down with the killer cold from hell. But before that it was all fun.
