Spring Party Planning Madness

 

The girls' birthday party is in 6 days, and I'm NOT my usual stressball of party planning....which leads me believe that I am overlooking something major.  Or, maybe I'm just getting better at going with the birthday party flow....

I am a notorious birthday party planning freaker-outer.  It all started with the oldest's first birthday.  She was the first and the only, so when Jace turned one, I had to have every detail just so.  I had a Fancy Nancy-themed party, complete with Jace's picture on a personalized birthday banner, every decoration/balloon/serving tray in the right place, and custom invitations from Etsy.  My sister-in-law made a cake that could have been for a wedding.  My brother-in-law practically broke out a level to hang the streamers.  My cousin took pictures, my husband took video, and I almost had a stroke making sure everything was perfect.

I really intended to turn things down a notch with the second birthday.  Except I was pregnant with daughter #2, and if you remember from A Second Love, I was going a little crazy trying to prove to myself that I could still give the same amount of attention to Jace as always.  Which resulted in an extreme Lalaloopsy-themed party...before they made Lalaloopsy themed party decorations.  I made my own invitations, scoured the internet for party favor ideas, and labored over the decorations.  I stressed over each of the 5 seperately-themed tables I set up.  Each one was based on a different doll with appropriate colors and themed items for that character.  Jace had the perfect party outfit, a huge cake, and of course, lots of pictures were taken.

By the third birthday, I was stretching myself a little thin.  I had to pull off the perfect Tinkerbell party for Jace, and then follow up with a one-of-a-kind Strawberry Shortcake themed first birthday for Daire a few weeks later.  They each had the right banners, balloons, tablecloths, themed party food and drinks, and of course - the personalized invitations from the cute little Etsy shop.  I had to do all of this while throwing a baby shower for one friend, a bachelorette party for another, and be the matron-of-honor in the wedding while sweating over my three-year-old being the flower girl at the same time.  I did it.  It almost killed me, but I did it. 

Maybe I have party-planning PTSD, but this year I am not allowing myself to reach any of my previous levels of hysteria.  For one thing, they don't give a rip about all of the decorations or the handmade, themed crap that I slave over. I knew this all along, but kept telling myself "one day they'll look back at the pictures and be so impressed." Yeah, right.  Get over yourself, lady.

For the sake of helping to reform any of my bretheren party-planner crazies out there - here are some of the things I have learned from my party-planning-zilla moments over the past few years:

1. If you work 45 hours a week and have two small children, it's Ok to not have time to hot glue stuff, teach yourself how to make cake pops, and whip up 3 tons of finger food for an event.

2. If you hate baking and kind of suck at it anyway, there are people out there who do such for a living and will gladly accept cash payment for taking over the burden of creating edible masterpieces that people will actually want to eat at your party.  If you're really worried about it, just throw it all on your own serving dishes and let people think you made it all.  *Warning: Your guests could potentially ask for the recipe or try to get you to bring said items to a future event.  Not that I've done that....I'm just saying, it could happen.

3. If you're a big fan of taking money out of your wallet and lighting it on fire, then please, by all means, spend tons of it on balloons and streamers.  You will only have to sit and pop $45 worth of helium balloons exactly 3 hours after filling them ONE TIME for that lesson to stick.  Also, the physical anguish of ripping down streamers that you spent hours putting up is almost unbearable.

4.  Children are not impressed with your organized activities.  Attempt to entertain them with well-thought out party games and they will yawn right before they run outside to play tag or roll around in the floor playing with balloons. 

5. No one cares if your party food fits the theme.  They just want to be fed.  Your tea cakes and fruit kabobs are cute, but order some pizza and everyone is happy.  They will also be grateful that you compensated them with an adequate food suply in exchange for having to spend their afternoon at a kid's birthday party as opposed to the 4 million other things they could do on a Saturday.

6. The birthday invitations and party favors ultimately end up in the same place: the trash can.  It causes me a lot less pain to imagine you throwing away the flyers I got printed at Staples, than the cute Etsy invite I had printed with the kids' names and pictures on them.  I gave up completely on stressing over favor bags.  I save money and you don't have to step on little plastic toys in your living room floor.  You're welcome!

7. Delegate.  I have had to relax greatly over the years as far as accepting help goes.  I used to be a "must do everything myself or it won't be done right" person.  Now I'm a "someone else offered to do it, THANK GOD I can take something off of my to-do list" person.  Someone offers to bring food?  Sure!  My mom offers to pick up the cakes?  Yes ma'am!  My sister wants to help decorate or a lady from church offers to do the centerpieces?  YES, YES, YES, and THANK YOU!

This year both girls wanted the same theme (Sofia the First).  Jackpot.  ONE party, ONE set of invitations to make, ONE day of freaking out about putting up decorations, and ONE load of party food to buy.  I felt guilty they weren't each getting their own party...for like 5 minutes, then I rented a bounce house and called the whole party planned.  Aaaaand DONE.

♥M

Top Chef - Watch Out!

 

 

I'm feeling super proud and domestic tonight for 2 reasons:

1. I baked brownie bites AND cupcakes - on the same night.

2. Neither of them were horrendous disasters.

 

Don't get excited or be stupid - they were both boxed mixes.  I would never be so dumb as to bake from scratch and ruin that many ingredients and waste that much time in one fell swoop.  It's not my thing.  I accept that and it really doesn't bother me anymore. 

 

 

 

 

I used to be super jealous of my friends and family that could bang out awesome, homemade creations.  Now I just appreciate the stuff that they cook...and know my limits.  We all have gifts and talents.  Usually, they happen to coincide with what you really enjoy doing (not always...but usually).  Once it finally dawned on me that I wasn't even really ENJOYING cooking or baking, I got over the fact that I wasn't exactly on my way to winning any competitions.  Not that I'm a total quitter - I still cook.  Only as necessary, however.  You know, like, dinner...or if someone says "Hey, can you bring...?" 

 

 

 

 

Like I said, though - know your limits.  We all have them...especially in the kitchen. 

My process for evaluating new recipes:

1. How MANY ingredients are involved?  (My limit is 5.)

2. Can I pronounce all of the ingredients?  (No?  Forget it.)

3. Is the prep time longer than 15 minutes?  (If so, not going to happen.)

4. Will I spend more on the crap that goes in this, than if I just went to a restaurant? (Yes?  Then grab the car keys.)

5. Who is going to be eating it? (People other than the hubs and the kids?  Forget it - I don't need this stress in my life.  Or the lawsuits after I poison everyone.)

6. How complicated are the directions? (If I have to call someone for clarification, it's best to just move on.)

 

 

 

Rest assured that if you are invited over to my house for a meal, there will be no experimenting in the kitchen.  I will either be serving frozen pizza or something that I have made enough times (with positive results), that there is no way I'll screw it up (spaghetti, chili, FROZEN PIZZA...)

 

 

 

 

 

Before you think I'm exaggerating, or being too hard on myself, let me share some of my most epic failures with you. 

 

1. One year, for my daughter's Lalaloopsy themed birthday party, I attempted to make pink and yellow swirled sugar cookies.  The picture online was super cute.  I didn't even MAKE the cookies - I used a mix.  Somehow they all ended up purple.  And hard.  Oh, and I wanted them to look like buttons, so I used a straw to punch holes in them...before I baked them.  DUMB.  Hard, purple, blobs - THAT'S what went in the favor bags.

 

2. The next year, I kept it simple.  I sent cupcakes to the babysitter's house.  I iced the cupcakes too soon, though; so what I actually sent was soggy cupcakes in a sea of icing.  Good thing 3 year-olds don't care what their sugar fix LOOKS like.

 

3. I made deviled eggs for my grandfather's retirement party.  I even got fancy and used a piping tool for the filling....which DID NOT MATTER because I put too much mayonnaise in the mixture and it all bled all over the place by the time we got to the party.  They tasted great - but no one was brave enough to find that out.  (I don't blame them.)

 

4. I ruined Hamburger Helper.  I used spoiled milk and it tasted like sewage.  In my defense, I had just bought the milk that day, so that was their foul.  In my husband's defense, he ate half of his like a champ, not wanting to hurt my feelings, until I took a bite and screamed, "WHY ARE YOU EATING THIS?!"

 

5. And the most epic of all?  I left a pot of boiling water on the stove and forgot I was cooking.  I burnt the pot.  I screwed up boiling water.  Fail.

 

 

 

 

 So cooking isn't my thing.  That's Ok!  It actually works out well for me, because now that it's been pretty established by my "A for effort" failures, people know better than to ask.  I'm the person who brings chips & dip to parties, canned green beans to Thanksgiving dinner, and store bought desserts to baby showers.  Do they sell it at a bakery or deli?  Then I got it!

♥M