Party Planning

Welcome, readers!  Natalie's second birthday is just around the corner, so today I'm thinking about party planning.

I feel like I have evolved as a party planner and have a lot of wisdom to share.  My wisdom is this: bouncy houses are amazing, and the Costco sheet cake is God's gift to moms.

Before having kids, throwing a party meant picking up booze from BevMo and getting some new CDs.  For really fancy parties, sometimes I cooked, and I used the oven and all the burners on the stovetop at the same time.  No decorating to speak of, except maybe filling a vase with flowers and throwing on a tablecloth.

Then, Camille's first birthday rolled around.  I can't remember how it started, but somehow everything snowballed and I found myself up for hours at night scouring the web for party planning ideas.  I blame Etsy for making a lot of this research possible.  I was completely stressed out about what crafty decorations I was going to make, what adorable theme we'd have, how the theme would look 20 years later in pictures and whether I would live in infamy as a rad mom.  The more you love your child, the more decorations you painstakingly make by hand, right?  And talk about the peer pressure.  At one point, another mom mentioned that they were having a farm party for her daughter's first birthday, complete with hay bales, a live petting zoo, and a hayride for 100 people.  A neighbor down the street had a choo-choo train making laps around the block.  The me today would have been impressed for sure and maybe had a quick thought about how birthdays are a marathon and not a sprint, and no kid remembers the first one.  But back then, these little tidbits almost sent new-mom me over the edge.

So back to Camille's birthday.  We ended up with a "zoo animal" theme.  I spent days making ribbon pom-pom centerpieces (which I still have on display in the living room, 3+ years later, because I can't bring myself to disassemble what took so much effort to build) and labeling animal cookies boxes with "Happy birthday" stickers, and then after completing those projects, I fell off the wagon and finished things off with Domino's Pizza, Costco cake, and some balloons from the grocery store.

Here's a picture of the pom-poms and animal cookies:

pom poms and animal cookies

the birthday girl

Despite my failure at decorating the perfect party, it was a terrific day, thanks to great guests and beautiful weather.  It was then and there that I realized elaborate party planning is for the birds.  At Camille's second birthday party, we discovered the awesomeness that is the bouncy house, rounding out my current party repertoire.

Costco sheet cake at second birthday

 Third birthday bounce house

I don't mean any of this to judge people with actual party planning skills.  I have been to so many lovely parties, that were planned to the smallest detail, and I have been thoroughly impressed.  One Minnie Mouse-themed birthday party was so adorable that it completely sealed the deal for me that I can never accomplish an awesomely decorated party and am right to stop trying.

And so Natalie, if your second birthday involves a Costco cake and bounce house, and maybe one Dora balloon, and we call it a Dora party, I still love you!