Party Planner

One month ago, Ada's birthday party was easy: she'd have an exact replica of her older sister's fifth birthday party. Oops: our favorite clown is in Hawaii this week. But that's OK, she had another idea, anyway. "I want an Alton Brown party!" Oops: this TV celebrity doesn't know you as well as you know him. But two weeks ago, Ada's birthday party was still easy: we'd go to Whole Foods for one of their cooking parties and I wouldn't even have to clean my house. Oops: Whole Foods had a massive kids' event last Saturday and no birthday parties were held all weekend. This is when things got a little complicated.

Alton Brown hosts a science-themed cooking show on The Food Network called Good Eats. He's also the host/food historian/scientist/commentator for Iron Chef America, but Ada doesn't watch that show. (Good Eats is a show we occasionally watch together while I nurse her baby brother.) It turns out that not only does Alton Brown not regularly perform at children's birthday parties halfway across the country, but also he's not a popular children's party theme. There are no canned party-in-a-box options to purchase. There aren't even Alton Brown-themed party hats. What to do? Here's Ada's 5th Birthday Alton Brown Party, for your amusement.

We decided on a Saturday morning party from 9-11, at which guests could wear pajamas (so that Ada could wear her favorite footie pjs). First came the homemade invitations (since I couldn't exactly order Good Eats invites):


Could you tell that's supposed to be an egg with bacon?

Ada was turning 5, so allowed 5 guests plus herself and her sister (4 guests came, for a total of 6 little girls). As they arrived, we greeted them with homemade name tags so that all the adults would know the children's names - the girls are now old enough that not all the parents needed to stay! A first. The girls went into the dining room and began decorating colorful aprons that would also serve as party favors.


When they'd finished their aprons they washed hands and divided themselves into two groups (by the color of their nametags). The Red Team stood on stools at the kitchen counter with Paul, making vanilla cupcakes. The Purple Team sat at the dining room table with me, making monkey bread.


As the projects baked, Ada opened her presents. Then all the girls sat in the family room to watch me standing behind the kitchen counter making a fool of myself demonstrating yeast and gluten while baking bread. (Thanks to Kristy for taking pictures. Thanks to my sister-in-law for the loaner lab coat and glasses!)



We secretly had three loaves of bread going so that the girls could see the mixing/kneading stage, the risen stage, and the baked stage in short order. After scraping dough from their hands, the girls divided back into their baking teams. The purple team decorated freshly baked cupcakes at the kitchen table while the red team made fruit kabobs in the dining room. The teams then switched stations, and when everyone was done the kids sat down together to eat at the dining room table.



Between activities there was time for free play in Ada and Ellie's room or taking turns flying Paul's remote controlled helicopter. I think it all went remarkably well! THANKS to Paul for co-leading and for making so many of my ideas come to life (including the cupcake toppers and laundry basket of gluten). Many, many thanks to my parents for making the 300 mile drives (separately!) through ice and white-out conditions to be here and to take care of Teddy during the party.



Today was Ada's birthday proper and she got to pick all the food: doughnuts for breakfast, mac and cheese for lunch, and tacos with re-fried beans for supper. Then more presents and it's all over for another 364 days! (Here she's opening a cookbook from her sister.)

The Season

Project Christmas Hat is 6/10 complete. On a related note, all of my nails are broken and the skin on my fingertips is extremely dry.

Still to come: Project Christmas Candle, Project Christmas picture, Project Christmas Letter, Project Christmas Baking, Project Christmas Open House, and Project Christmas Presents. (Project Christmas House is relaxingly completed.)

Baby news, in case you're interested - and of course course you're interested! - Teddy is now 8 months old. 8 months! He's a confident sitter and is starting to get onto hands-and-knees to lunge forward. He'll be crawling before long! He is also beginning to wave. Today Paul asked Teddy, where's my mouth? Where's my nose? And Teddy reached out and touched the appropriate parts at the appropriate times. So cool. He's talking, too. By which I mean that he knows, gleefully, "Dadadadada!" for his father and "Ah-duh,ada,ada,ada" for his sister. Also, angrily, "Mamamamama!" for me and, occasionally, a cheerful "Hey!" for hi.

I love this kid. So glad we added a third.

(So are the girls. They're also nuts about Christmas. But now I need to catch some sleep; Teddy has a cold, is cutting 4 teeth at once, and will have me up before long!)

Hot Pad

Paul's cousin gave each of my girls a craft kit for weaving hot pads, suggested age 6+. I thought this was rather ambitious and figured I'd wait for the excitement of piles of Christmas presents to die down a little, then put the craft kits away for a few years. Ada's 3 and Ellie's 7 but her dexterity isn't quite the same as most of her peers.

One day, while Ellie was in school, Ada brought me the kit. She really wanted to weave a hot pad. So we gave it a shot. I helped a little: keeping loose loops from sliding off the loom, lifting tight strands so she could slip the weaving strand over/under, and binding off the edges at the end. But designing and maintaining the pattern plus weaving the pieces through was all Ada.

She proudly presented her finished craft to her Daddy, who uses it under his coffee mug:



The hardest part for me was to allow mistakes to happen without correcting them.

Ellie Is a First Grader!

This week clobbered us a bit with end-of-year busyness - including gift procurement. We make end-of-term gifts for the girls' teachers and helpers.  Since the number of gifts is usually  between one and two dozen, economics are a factor in our decision about what to make, as is time.  This year we wanted to do something the girls could help with (ruling out hot wax) and slightly healthy if food-related.

From a book of such ideas, we decided on dipped strawberries that were supposed to look like balloons against a blue sky (photo at left).

The instructions made this look very easy. I've melted candy and dipped foods into it before (pretzels, crackers, etc.). We had containers, foam, food coloring, and wooden kabob skewers. All we needed were the strawberries! Couldn't be easier, right?

The girls loved the idea. They loved helping. Ada helped me wrap the foam and push it into the containers. Both girls helped dip strawberries and sampled the chocolate. But there were some hang-ups.

1. It turns out that liquid (including food coloring) ruins candy coating and powdered food coloring isn't readily available at the 11th hour.
2. And produce stand strawberries aren't necessarily as long lasting and resilient as store-bought giant monstrosiberries.
3. Also, as with all such projects, tiny time-sucks like hot gluing fluffy clouds and tying tiny ribbons kept Paul and me up past 2:00 am.

So there were a couple extra trips to the store and some modifications to the design. Results:



Hopefully they tasted good.

Peter Pan Party

"Sarahlynn has really outdone herself this year. What is she going to do to top this next year?" my sister asked my mother after Ellie's 6th birthday party this weekend.

I don't plan to try to top myself next year. After all, I didn't plan to do much this year. Just a simple party, inexpensive, few activities, mostly free play, maybe cupcakes.

Here's how it went down.

Ellie's been into the movie Peter Pan lately, so that became our theme. I typed the invitations and printed them on card stock along with a few images (Tinkerbell, a crocodile, Peter and the Darlings flying over London, a map of Neverland). Then I burned the pages into fun shapes and crisped the invitations in the oven. We hand delivered them. Cost: free! So far, so good.

As Ellie's 8 guests arrived (6 because she's turning 6 plus a couple siblings, ages 1-8, girls and boys, some with Down syndrome and some without) they ran around the house and got acquainted with one another.

The weather was lovely, a perfectly crisp, blue autumn day. So for our first activity we went outside and had a "Fairy Flower Treasure Hunt" in the front yard. I showed each child a silk flower, they ran off to find one like it, then brought it back for the next "clue" and so forth. I bound each child's bouquet with floral tape and attached a nametag. Presto: party favors!

Then all the kids sneaked to the backyard to play on the wooden swings/rockwall/slide playset. Eventually a few children started looking around for something else to do, but no worries! I had a few more tricks up my sleeve.

Paul was in charge of decorating and he did a great job with the house. There was a "Welcome to Neverland!" banner beside the front door and a large hand-drawn map of Neverland Island in the foyer. The family room was "Indian Camp," the dining room was "Tinker's Nook," and the basement playroom was Pirate's Cove/Mermaid Lagoon.

The children filed into the living room, where I sprinkled imaginary pixie dust on their heads and asked them to hold out their arms. "You Can Fly!" played on the computer as the guests swooped around the room, stopping on small maps of Neverland when the music stopped. Each round, one child found him or herself without a map upon which to stand and was "out." They didn't mind, though! Because I sent them straight downstairs to Walk the Plank.

Paul was waiting in the basement with the next activity. Kids bounced on the mini trampoline, walked down a low balance beam, then jumped off onto a blue blanket (the lagoon) where Paul waited for them with fairy glitter and temporary tattoos (fairies or pirates).

After getting their ink, guests came back upstairs to me, where I waited by the tee pee in the family room with a hot glue gun, more colored card stock, and some feathers. "What's your favorite animal? What's your favorite activity?" Each child discovered his or her Indian name and got a fancy nametag. (I particularly enjoyed "Singing Chicken.")

Soon, it was time for cake. My parents were here to help this weekend (bless them!) and my mom thoughtfully baked the cakes so all I had to do on Saturday afternoon was decorate them. We had a strawberry Neverland Island iced green (two small inverted pyrex bowl shapes with cupcakes embracing a blue lagoon) and a chocolate pirate ship.

My second best moment of the day came when one guest's mother said, "Look, the cake is just like a pirate ship!" and her daughter replied, "No, Mom, it IS a pirate ship!"

My first favorite moment of the day was seeing how happy and excited Ellie was the whole time. She doesn't open gifts and is easily overwhelmed by too much stimulation. She didn't want to play the games, though she loves to watch. And she looked forward to the party with such excitement and had SO MUCH FUN having her friends over, playing outside, and walking the plank to jump into the lagoon. Most especially, she loved the whole cake/candles/ice cream/singing part of the party.

How can I top this next year? By showing up. Ellie is a child who is impossible to spoil. She is so generous with her smiles and hugs and praise. She appreciated every aspect of the party, but she would have been thrilled to have just family and a a simple cupcake, too. Her attitude takes the pressure off, though I can never resist trying to design an afternoon that's so perfect for her she didn't even know to wish for it. I'm sure I'll try again next year. (I'm thinking: The Little Mermaid at the swimming pool.)

I'll post the pictures for my Friday Photoblogging this week.

Loomy

Operation Homemade Gifts is off to a mixed start.

I began simply, with knit hats for a newborn and a one-year-old, both boys. There's some concern that one of the hats isn't "butch" enough for its recipient. (Not my judgment. I picked the yarn thinking it was fine.) Thoughts?



Many thanks to my pumpkin models. I will soon show my appreciation by making you into tasty bread.

Gift number three, well, wasn't quite as homemade as the others. But someday I'll be giving homemade books!



Currently in progress: a tiny teddy bear. Hopefully it will turn out slightly less creepy than my last attempt:

Got Wood?

As we near our first ever homemade-gifts-only holiday season, I have a question.

Do you have any idea where I might procure several large tree stumps?

My only idea is to call local tree service companies and ask if I can follow them around for a day. I'd rather not do that.

The Birds and the Balls

I'm so crafty. Look out for homemade Christmas presents from meeeeee.



Also, soccer, yo!

Not Writing (Enough), Not Sleeping (Enough) Either

Last week was a busy week.

This week is a busy week.

I try very hard to protect my two dedicated mornings a week for writing, but it's not going very well. It seems like there's always something oh-so-important that crops up to cut into both my morning and my evening writing times, slowing - but not stalling - progress.

How does this keep happening?

In the meantime . . .

I finished "knitting" my third hat. The first two were a little smaller than I wanted them to be (one in circumference, the other in length) and the third was much longer than I intended. Perhaps I'll have to start - gasp - counting rows or something. In the meantime, I'm all set for the next time a friend has a baby with a very small head. I intend to try arm warmers next; wish me luck.

I'm reading Brandon Sanderson right now, instead of the TWO books that I haven't read for my TWO book clubs that are meeting this week. (Sorry, book club pals.)

I read an interview with the refreshingly humble and apparently very hard-working Sanderson in which he said that he suspects he'll go down in history as a footnote on Robert Jordan's bio, as the guy who wrote the last book in the Wheel of Time series.

When I first read that, it made me a little sad for Sanderson. Here's a young guy, just starting out in his career, and he catches a big break. But there's a catch. The "big break" is too big; it pigeon-holes and typecasts Sanderson. His own work will never have a chance to be evaluated on its own merit; he'll never have a chance to build his own fan base; he'll always just be that guy who finished A Memory of Light.

The more I read him, though, the less concerned about that I am. Sanderson's writing style is distinct from Jordan's. He's also hard-working, dedicated, and prolific. He keeps publishing his own work while he's working on the Jordan novel, and he has a unique voice. His world building is fabulous. (Oddly, I have a hard time really connecting with and caring about his characters, but the setting and conflict are interesting enough that I'm willing to keep reading to find out what happens. I do, however, find that I put the book down more often than I expected to. I'll sit down with a cup of coffee and the novel, expecting to read a chapter while the children nap, and suddenly find myself in another room, checking my email, wondering what happened.)

But I probably wouldn't have picked up a Sanderson novel if I weren't a Wheel of Time fan trying to find out about the guy who's finishing the series. And now I've bought three of his novels and visited his website several times. I'm a fan of Sanderson's work through his connection to Jordan, and I doubt I'm the only one. I think he'll do very well for himself.

And now I need to go get a little beauty rest; early tomorrow morning Ellie and I are going to make our small-screen debut in a video about families with kids entering Kindergarten next year. I'm off to sleep in curlers.