I have turned into a person who fondants. It is, for real, one of the most fun evening activities ever, especially if you make a friend or your mom do it with you and drink copious amounts of pinot grigio while mushing icing into the shape of spiders.
I am aware that this looks impossible. Trust me, I have in the past found it to be so. Except at this point I have tried it a couple of times, and oh:
Possible.
The other day I was at Children's Storytime at the library, and I ran into my friend Brianna, who was there with her niece (who happens to be Goldie's BFF). I mentioned that we were throwing Indy a "spooky party" for his fifth birthday, and she said "OH. You have to make worms!"
Apparently there is a recipe all over the Internet that explains how one can pour raspberry Jell-O into bendy straws, and somehow end up with worms.
WORMS.
Remember when I said that my friend Elise and I decided to go for the same theme for both of our daughter's birthday parties, so we could share the decorations (both the cost and the labor)? It ended up being such a good idea.
I loved how Goldie's party turned out - and Elise's was absolutely spectacular (ok, it helps that she had a friend with an insanely beautiful house who offered to let her throw the party in the backyard). The coolest part: even though all the decorations and activities were the same at the two parties, they ended up feeling special and unique in both venues with just minor tweaks.
Mix-and-match dishes from Noritake China
Apparently it is fall. Well, not technically - not until the 22nd - but to me, once Labor Day Weekend is over and school has begun: it's fall.
The weather here would like me to know that I am wrong on this point. Yesterday was without a doubt the hottest day I have experienced since I moved to California. (I'm not entirely sure that it technically was, but it definitely felt that way; I was practically fainting by the time I got home from school pickup, and ended up stealing my son's second apple juice from his backpack so that I didn't actually pass out. Granted, my assessment mayyyy have been influenced by the fact that I spent a couple of hours prior to that wandering around in the open sun collecting petition signatures - which is another story; the salient point for the purposes of this particular post is that 95 degrees feels like approximately 1,000 degrees when you are standing in a parking lot explaining student-to-teacher ratios and getting all fired up about what constitutes a "fair wage.")
FEELINGS.
I was prepared to be all "but my baybyyyyyyy!" about Goldie's second birthday - I've done this once or twice before, as you may recall - and so this time I came prepared with a mandate: I would remember to take a minute every once in awhile to stop being a hostess and just be with my kids. It's so easy, when you're the one throwing a party, to get caught up in cooking and serving drinks and answering the door and making sure you talk to everyone...and then boom: the whole thing is over and everyone is gone and the dishes need doing, and you realize that you just spent the past several hours running around like the proverbial chicken and completely forgot to notice what was happening.
You want the day back.
