The planning of another party... (the twins turn 3!!)

Instead of posting all my birthday photos to facebook first, I made a mental requirement that I shall post them to my blog first since I have so poorly neglected it for quite some time. So here goes…

About a month or two ago I put on my thinking cap for what to do about the twins' third birthday. Can you believe they are three already?? It's as if my babies aren't even babies anymore. *sniff sniff*

Mackenzie as a 3 year old!

Anika as a 3 year old!

I had decided that I'm quite burnt out from throwing birthday parties…which is sad since I've only had 6 parties all together. But the mere thought of entertaining a group of 3 year olds seemed much too exhausting. These days I find that even mopping my kitchen floor is too daunting of a task. So throwing a party would not only mean hosting toddlers, but would mean cleaning my house. I have grown to detest cleaning the house. The newness of the house has worn off and now it's just a pain to clean. And who wants to invite people over without clean floors?? So I decided that I should outsource the party, like everyone else seems to do. How expensive could it be? Well, VERY expensive as I found out! I'm in the wrong business. I should open some joint kid birthday / baby-having / wedding-planning place and charge insane prices for everything. I'd be set. I think I looked up at least eight different options and the least expensive option was still going to be over $250. Some of them were $500! YIKES!! Now, as I do with all purchases I began to rationalize the cost because technically, per kid I could divide the cost in half. But even with all my rationalization it just seemed that paying all that money for a 3 year old for 1.5 hours would not be a wise investment. Instead, I'd rather purchase new toys for them that they could play with every day (or every weekend in my case since our week days have zero time for playing with toys). So an at-home party and new toys it would be. Of course that meant I needed a theme. I asked the girls what kind of party they wanted and all Anika said was she wanted a "pink" party and then Mackenzie said she wanted a "purple" party. I was fine with doing that, but what on earth do you do for a pink and purple party? Luckily my brilliant mother suggested a "May" theme where I could do a maypole dance and have May flowers, etc. So…I came up with a pink and purple Garden party theme! It was generic enough and super easy to have pink and purple and would be fine for both boys and girls.

The Invitations
Making the invitations is my favorite part of the party as it is one of the three times a year I get to do something creative so I set out to find something fun. It didn't take me long to stumble upon an idea to make little 3-D flower pot invitations and they were soooo easy! I had all the materials I wanted to use already except for the mini flower pots. And since I was only inviting a handful of kids and knew I could hand deliver the invitations, I didn't have to worry about mailing them. They were really easy to make and would have been fast too if I my glue gun hadn't broken down. I spent two evening "work slots" just trying to get the glue gun to work! Grrrrr. Below is a shot of the end product. I showed some people the photo and then found out that if people just looked at the photo they actually thought the invitation was much larger than it really is. I find the miniature size to be part of its charm so the actual invitation is only about 3 or 4 inches high. The pot is 1.5 inch at it's widest opening. The wording was on the leaf portion. The left side says "It's a Garden Party! Mackenzie & Anika are turning 3!" and the right leaf gives the date, time, location, and RSVP info.

Flower pot invitations!

And then the rain came...
I remember from Addison's party that trying to organize 3 year olds for very long is not a very easy thing to do. They can do crafts, but if you try to get them to play a game, they are either going to be too shy, too impatient, or too scared. All three year olds really want to do is run around and play with toys. They don't even care so much about interacting with others. So I was hoping for good weather (which didn't really happen). My original plan was to just set out a ton of outdoor toys and do the entire party and activities outside. Of course when the weather called for 8 days straight of rain and thunderstorms it became apparent that I had better come up with a plan B. So I did…it worked out fine but not quite what I wanted. Technically the rain stopped for the party, but everything was wet and I didn't think it would be fun for kids to get their shoes soaked or for the parents to be sitting on wet seats. So here is what I did for the party:

Flower pot cupcake bouquets

Both flower pot cupcake bouquets together!

There are two things I remember with great clarity about my birthday parties growing up: the cake and the favors. My mom always made my cakes as well as some crazy fabulous favors. So since I liked them so much, I figure it's worth it to do the same for my kids…even though about five minutes into making the cakes I usually wonder what on earth I was thinking since frosting is not my friend.

For the garden party it seemed only fitting to have a flower cake and after doing a little search online I came across the concept of flower pot cupcake bouquets. I LOVED the idea. So that meant I could do a pink one for Anika and a purple one for Mackenzie. I bought inexpensive clay pots from Michaels and painted one purple/white and the other pink/white. Little did I know it would require 6 coats of paint so that turned out to take longer than I thought, but I'll be able to let them keep the pots and plant their own flowers so I guess it was worth it. Now, I don't technically know how to decorate cakes. Sure, I can do the little stars and can pipe frosting out of a bag, but I had never tried actually making flowers before. How hard could it be? As it turns out…not hard at all!! The hardest part is mixing up the frosting colors and switching out all the tips. After all, every tip I switched out meant one more thing I had to clean. And as I already mentioned, I hate cleaning. But I think the bouquets turned out great! I don't know if the flowers I made look like real-life flowers, but I think they came pretty close. I'd even say one or two of them actually looked quite like the real thing! They are my favorite cakes yet. The hardest part was after I baked the cupcakes figuring out how to fit them in the flower pot and keep them from falling. In my head it was so easy. And then I killed a few cupcakes trying to figure it out. In the end, I'm sure there must be an easier way, but I eventually just stuck them all on skewers which went into big chunks of flower styrofoam. I dreamed of doing a bouquet where the flowers were at varying heights but realized that was going to be impossible so I just tried to make it somewhat rounded and used a ton of extra skewers to help balance some of the highest cupcakes. One bouquet turned out better than the other but I was positive that neither Anika nor Mackenzie would notice or mind. Addison, on the other hand, as soon as she saw the flowers pointed out right away that one of the "flowers" was sticking out too far when she saw it. Gee thanks, Addison.

I think the guests all like the cakes. Two people walked by the bouquets and didn't even notice they were cupcakes! Woo hoo! I'll take that as a compliment. :) The only thing I wish I had done was made better cupcakes. I only ever do the cake the day before and by then I just decide to use a box of cake mix and make them that way. One of these days I'll make fancy, great tasting cupcakes like they'd serve in a bakery. It wouldn't be that hard but it does require extra planning. So not this year. Probably not next year either. But one day…

Anika's pink cupcake cake

Mackenzie's purple cupcake cake!

Favors and fun:
Every party I like to make personalized favors of some sort. I understand the idea that kids love getting little things that make them feel special. In fact, my kids could probably sit in an empty room and be allowed to run around and as long as there was cake they would think it's a party. If you gave them cake AND a little present even if the present was one little sticker, they would think they were at a very special party. (As a side note, the twins only really care about having cake but ever since she was little, Addison has equated parties with balloons. I didn't get balloons for this year's party mostly because I just forgot and ran out of time. I was hoping they wouldn't notice. And they didn't. However, at dinner that night I was asking the girls how they liked the party and when it was Addison's turn she said the party was a lot of fun and she wanted her party to have the bounce house too. Except, she noted, that this party was missing balloons and she really, really wanted balloons at her party. Um, I guess someone *did* notice there were no balloons...oh well).

I've never really understood why the party stores charge so much for those tiny little plastic trinkets meant for favor bags. It seems so silly to pay so much for plastic bugs or rings or whatever is in there. So I try to find things that will be useful *and* are inexpensive so that if they get thrown away like many party favors do, it's no big deal. It's more the thought that counts. So this year I came up with something that could count as a favor and that I could use as a party activity as well. A double win!! Since it was a garden party I thought it would be fun to create a little gardening bag with small toddler shovels. In my quest to find inexpensive shovels I came across "color your own" flower pots. So I hatched a plan to fill a little personalized bag with some dirt, some seeds, and a little shovel. That would be the "favor" and then the activity would be for the kids to decorate their own flower pots. Once they decorated them, they could use their gardening bag to plant some seeds and make some flowers. It actually worked out great! The perfect little activity for 3 year olds. And while several stores had little shovels, the winning find was at Michaels. They not only had TONS of gardening supplies including $1.00 mini shovels, there was a 30% off coupon which meant I could buy all the supplies for the craft activity and the favors for all the kids for under $30 with some materials left over to make more. Although technically I didn't buy the dirt...I used some left over that my mom had which she so nicely put in little ziplock bags for me.

The basket of personalized "garden bags"

I also thought the kids could make tissue paper flowers in addition to the flower pots. My mom had offered to help me so she actually assembled the pipe cleaners and made the folds ahead of time so I didn't actually get to try my hand at making the flowers or get the kids to test them out. I had remembered them being so easy! But, for anyone considering this for a 3 year old activity, you may want to reconsider... They were much more difficult for them to make then I thought they'd be. Oh well...you win some, you lose some! They were pretty though, and with a little help from the parents they came out just fine. :)

You can see the tissue paper flowers in this photo... Pretty, but difficult.

I had originally hoped to have the craft time, do a "maypole" dance outside, and then let the kids play outside with the bounce house and all the toys I could pull out for the yard. With the rainy weather those plans were tossed aside so the night before I experimented to see if my giant bounce house would fit inside. Luckily, it did!! It was a tight fit but I moved the furniture in my family room and fit it in the hallway area and let the kids jump away. That bounce house has been the absolute single best toy purchase I've ever made. I bought it on a whim from Amazon on clearance for some insane deal just three days before Addison's 2nd birthday party. It arrived the day before and it was a great hit for her party. I have used it for every party and every little event I've had since then. The kids think it's the best thing ever!

So some kids played in the playroom, some kids jumped in the bouncer or played in the ball pit, and some kids were still finishing at the craft table. All the kids joined together for snacks and cake and then we spent the last few minutes of the party playing outside since the sun had come out just a bit. That way they could also do their "carrot hunt." My mom had found these adorable little carrots at the dollar store and thought it would be great fun to fill them up and then have the kids "dig" to find the carrots in the garden. It wasn't going to be as much fun to have the kids digging through wet dirt with all the rain so instead I changed it into a hunt so they each could find a carrot that was hidden around the yard. One of the side benefits of having a crafty mother is that she enjoys coming up with fun ideas as well and helps makes the party even more fun!

Tiny little pinwheels leading up to the Garden party

The bounce house fits inside (view from above)!!

Craft time!

The crackers/cheese/ham was also shaped into little flowers.

I strategically didn't do the party over lunch, but did provide plenty of snacks...and cupcakes of course!

All in all, I think the party was great. There were five other little friends in addition to my three girls. I invited the "regulars" which are basically the girls' friends by default...the dinner party club kids. BUT, because we all had kids the first round at the same time, we all have older kids. And then we all have a second round of kids the same age as the twins. Anytime we get together we have all the kids and inevitably the older kids set the tone of the party and it's an entirely different experience. So since Anika and Mackenzie don't even get their own party I figured the least I could do was to just have all the kids their own age there. I was a little nervous to ask that just the younger kids come but as it turns out for many of these younger siblings this was the very first time they got to go to a party all their own and it made them feel quite special! So it was great for all the younger kids to be able to go somewhere by themselves. I did let the girls each invite a friend from school too. Only one of the school friends could come but they were so excited to have him there and it was extra fun to see them together outside of school. I suppose I could have just invited school friends, but the kids are still young enough they don't really have specific "friends" and I find comfort in having a houseful of close friends who could care less whether my house was a mess or whether all the activities flopped or anything like that. So it worked out wonderfully!

Anika blows out her candle.

Mackenzie blew out her candle so fast I couldn't even get a photo!

And of course Addison had a great time at the party as well.

Me with the girls on their birthday!

Of course in a relative comparison, I find it humorous that the day before the party Addison (and the twins) were invited to one of Addison's good friend's birthday party. It was a petting zoo at this friend's house and there were a TON of people there. I mean, literally, more children than I can ever imagine having over to my house. The party was very nice and the weather amazingly stopped raining and the sun came out for the duration of the party. The minute it was over the rain came pouring down again. As I was leaving I couldn't even imagine a scenario where I'd ever have so many children (and parents) at my house. My party planning is clearly limited to small crowds. I am incapable of handling the stress of something like that! Only 4 months before I have to worry about the next party. :)

Free time apparently makes me lazy...and fat

The last two weeks I have been shocking lazy. It's all somewhat disturbing actually. I'm wrapping up my project at work which means that while I have enough work to keep me busy during the day, I really don't have any reason to log in at night. Combine that with the fact that I haven't signed myself up for any extra-curricular projects, it means that once I get home, feed the kids and put them to bed, I don't technically have anything I have to do. I suppose I eventually have to do dishes and laundry, but it doesn't all have to be done each night. In theory I was all excited about all the things that I *could* do because of this temporary freedom and bliss. I had visions of organizing my files, painting some pictures for the house, exercising, cleaning up rooms, etc. But what really happened? Nothing. Absolutely nothing! All last week instead of doing anything at all I just sat down on the couch and watched tv. Oh, and I ate. I ate a LOT. I pretty much ate everything I had in the house totally scrapping any concept of my diet. Even the guilt of my weekly weigh-ins didn't stop me. I didn't multitask -- no laundry, no bill paying, no sorting through papers. I just sat there. Sometimes I just sat there with the tv on "pause" since technically I like to wait until the kids fall asleep before I turn it on for fear of waking them. I hadn't actually watched tv during prime time in months. It was delightfully fun and there are some really good shows on tv! In fact, there were some really hilarious commercials too! The first few days I felt great. I thought about the fact that I was wasting time but figured a couple days couldn't possibly hurt. The next few days, little twinges of guilt started to creep in. I simply resolved that by eating more food. One day I found my secret stash of peanut M&Ms and ate the entire bag. The next day I wanted a dessert so I made a crumb cake and ate the entire thing. The next day...you get the idea. By the end of last week I recognized that I was in some serious rut and sat back and analyzed the situation. I had spent over an entire week doing nothing but watching tv and eating (at least in the 8 pm - midnight hours). I went to bed before midnight several nights and one night I even used my jacuzzi tub to soak in a bath for the first time since I moved into my new house! My stress level was at an all time low. I had plenty of sleep, I wasn't worried about work, I didn't seem to care if anything got done around the house, and I didn't have any deadlines to meet. Is this what the rest of the world does? It can't be! Maybe that's how people end up not having time to get anything done. I have to admit it's been kind of nice. But by Friday my inability to lazily sit around and do nothing finally kicked in and I managed to get back in the swing of things. Thank goodness. Now I'm much more content. Of course I didn't quite ditch my "eating everything in sight" habit, but hopefully that's coming any day now. My willpower has been compromised.

I don't really know what was wrong with me except that maybe my body decided it needed a vacation of its own without consulting me. Perhaps I can do a better job of spending some days doing nothing and some days being productive, living a blissful life of leisure. Ha ha. Easy for me to say now. When work is easy and the kids are healthy, life is grand. Even when, I suppose, it's not exactly the life I had planned for myself. It's still pretty good. Now I think I'll go walk past the dirty dishes, feed the cat, check on the kids, and take a magazine to read in bed before I fall asleep. Ah, the life. :)

My Christmas Card Creation!!

I promised myself before January was over I'd make every effort to make a post about my Christmas card since it's my favorite Christmas creation yet. With minutes to spare, I'm meeting that goal!

The making of the card...
A couple years ago I was flipping through a magazine that had some samples of corporate self-promotions. In one of the small photos there was what looked like a game that a company had created for the holidays. Now, I don't actually know what the point of the game was or how it incorporated the company, etc. because I couldn't see the details but it made me think it would be an awesome idea for my own Christmas card. In fact, if I had kept more than just the tiny cutout of the photo, I could give credit to the company who had the idea in the first place since I bet it was somewhere included in the magazine. I couldn't even attempt to create a game in 2009 but from the time 2010 rolled around I was determined I would do it.

The first thing I had to figure out what how on earth to make angled and curved "spaces" on a game board. Not actually being a graphic designer makes much of my lovely ideas more difficult. If only I knew what I was doing, life would be much easier!!! But these days everything is on the internet so I took a few online tutorials, read a couple articles and *poof* I learned how to make curved lines!! Of course I imagine there is a much easier way than how I did it, but oh well. Once I figured out how to layout the board I came up with a variety of things that happened throughout the year and tried to assign relative game values to them (e.g. "move 1 social space forward" or "go to time out"). I thought the game would be way too boring with all text so I selected some photos to include and then I began piecing the together which "events" would go in which space. I even did a test run with the game to make sure it was playable. The idea was to create a playable game that would let people know what happened this year with some twists of humor here and there.

Once I figured out the content and layout, I began work on the logistics. I suppose in retrospect I should have figured out the logistics first, but I needed to make sure I could actually design the card before I bothered with finding the cheapest way to produce this thing! I originally thought I'd do a game on a 5x7 card but after designing Jennifer's poster wedding invitations I loved the idea of doing a 12x18 game. Unfortunately it wasn't until AFTER I sized my entire game board to a 12x18 that I discovered the extra size would be 1/8th of an inch too large for standard postage. Oops! So I decided to make a few in the larger size but also to resize the entire board to an 11x17 so it wouldn't need an "oversized" envelope. From a "production" perspective, I wanted to keep the card very low cost so I had to be quite creative in how I got it all done. Between maximizing print space, cutting out and assembling things myself, shopping around for multiple vendors for different needs, and finding and coupons or sales, I did it!!

I didn't even attempt to take a family photo this year (it hardly ever seems worth the effort!) so I thought it would be fun to just take a few shots of the girls by themselves on the back porch one day and use those to make little game pieces. I figure it was killing two birds with one stone...I could send photos of my family for people I don't see often AND I could use them as the game pieces. I even included a shot of myself since I happened to be in a photo from the October wedding. The game pieces required a lot more cutting than I would have liked, but they turned out even better than I was hoping so it was worth it.

The last step of my game board came together only at the last minute. After talking with my helpful printer about a different job he had done, I came up with an idea to include a spinner on the game board! I originally wanted to find a way to include some dice with the game. But I looked everywhere for a tiny box/dice die-cuts to make a do-it-yourself dice set to include -- no luck! Instead I started searching for game spinners. They are, oddly enough, very hard to find!! Most game spinners were going to be way too big not to mention only sold in bulk. However, on a hunt through Michael's I found a set of spinners in various sizes in the scrapbooking section. How convenient!! I waited until the big after Thanksgiving sale to get them on sale and voila -- I had my spinners! Unfortunately it meant editing my board to include a spinner, and because the spinners were multiple sizes I couldn't exactly create the perfect size since I only wanted to design one board. I figured most people probably wouldn't care if their spinner was slightly too big or too small anyway. But once I had the spinner, I knew the game was playable all on its own and hoped people would actually play it! I don't know how many people actually *did* play, but a few people said they did with their kids and that's good enough to make me happy.

Once I had the board, the game pieces, and the spinner, I just drafted up some instructions and threw them all into a little candy bag and printed out a little bag holder. I wanted to tape the bag "topper" to the bag but that didn't work well. I tried stapling too but that just didn't seem to cut it. So instead, I hand punched holes in each of the bags and put eyelets in them. More work than I had originally planned for but I thought those little bags were so cute it was well worth it in the end. Besides, I got to watch tv while I did it, so that was nice.

The one small flaw of my card idea was that it was heavier than I anticipated, bumping it slightly over the standard mail rate. Oops! By the time I figured that out, it was too late so there wasn't much I could do about it. Luckily it only bumped up the postage a bit and was still less than if I had used the 12x18 size paper.

If you didn't get a chance to see my card, here are some photos of it. I wish I could have sent the card to everyone I wanted, but since I was sticking within my budget I only printed a certain handful and after that, I could send no more. :(

This is a photo of the card unfolded with the game pieces taken out of the bag.

The game pieces! Note that these were my "test" game pieces so they look much more unruly than the others did along the edges. I cut all the others nicely but these I was so anxious to try them out I just sort of folded and ripped. I'm impatient. And lazy too since I didn't want to go open the reserved little game package I made for myself in order to take pictures of the board.

The game instructions/pieces packet! This turned out much better than I had originally envisioned.

This is the back of the game piece package.

Reactions to the game (and how I found time)...

Now, I've received all sorts of reactions to my cards. I got plenty of delightful reactions of people who genuinely loved the card and some who even played it. Yay! I even had some people who thought I must sell the game to others, whether it be in the form of a single game or a template for cards. Some people showed it to friends or family. Some people were convinced I should be in a different career (note to those folks...seriously I'm not an artist, just good enough to fake it when needed!). And some people simply never mentioned anything. However, the most befuddling reactions were the handful of people who actually seemed annoyed by the card and those who commented that I simply must have too much time on my hands. I have my own theories on why someone would have those reactions, but I'll keep those theories to myself. But certain comments did stick with me for a while.

For anyone who doesn't work full time and manage a household of three toddlers by themselves, let me assure you I don't have a lot of "spare" time to do all the things I'd love to do. Let's face it though, we all have the same 24 hour time allotment in a day. Some people sleep, some people watch tv, some people go out, some people work, some people exercise, some people spend time with their kids. Everyone has different priorities. Except in rare cases, at some point we are given a choice of what to do with our time. My biggest chunks of "time" are spent doing things I willingly accept as a result of decisions I've made for my own life. My job takes a lot of time, but I enjoy the challenge as well as the rewards of having a demanding job. My kids take a LOT of time but I chose to have children, knowing it would be a permanent change to my life. Now, I hadn't quite anticipated the whole single mom thing but we can't plan out everything, can we?? My evenings are rather hectic between rushing home, getting everyone fed, bathed, and to bed (which is an exhausting challenge in itself since it could be described and a few hours of chaos and tantrums). But most nights I do have at least a couple hours to decide what to do. If I don't need to do work stuff, I typically fill the time with dishes, laundry, paying bills, cleaning up, logging in and doing work stuff that I didn't get done during the day, or getting other "must-do" things done. If I'm too ambitious one night then the next time I might have to use my time to catch up on sleep I may have missed previously. I multitask quite well and folding laundry and paying bills is perfect for watching tv. However, there are times when I decide my life should be more interesting than just doing the "must-do" things and I actually do other things besides the "mandatories." Some things are easy to fit in like facebook, flipping through a magazine, or even having a friend come over to catch up after the girls go to bed. But others take much more effort and time, and when that happens, I prioritize accordingly and things like my Christmas card get done!

To make the time to do the card, a few pleasantries immediately fell off my list. No TV and no facebook. Period. They are time suckers and to get it done, I just couldn't manage to use up any extra time. I also gave up cleaning and laundry. I couldn't give up ALL cleaning as I don't have enough dishes to last a full month. But I would go 5 days straight with simply just piling up dishes, one atop the other, in my sink and on the countertop until it overflowed. But that saved little chunks of time each night and then on the weekend I'd do all the dishes one day while the kids ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner (again with the multitasking!). And my poor, poor laundry. This suffered the most. I detest doing laundry; it takes so long. And the more I put it off, the more overwhelming it becomes. So while I probably did at least one emergency load a week, towards the end of my little Christmas card project, there were at least three days when I dressed my kids entirely in dirty clothes. Yep, I admit it. They weren't super dirty, but the clothes had been worn before and I hadn't washed them yet. But hey, I prioritized my card over my kids wearing clean clothes. I mean, we all have priorities.

Why'd I do it??
So I'm sure some people wonder why I'd want to spend time on a Christmas card. The answer is simple -- it's because I really LOVE Christmas cards! In fact, I pretty much love cards *any* time of the year. But when you combine the spirit of Christmas and a card, it makes it that much more fun. And while I used to do crafty things all the time in my former life, these days I just don't get to do that much of it anymore. So I use the Christmas card as a great way to express some sort of creative freedom while simultaneously using it as a way to let people know what I've been up to. It's great fun for me. I actually see Christmas cards in general as tiny little gifts of love. Some people worry that because they don't have pictures to include or anything interesting to write about, that nobody would want to receive a card from them. Not so!! I love all cards and I most certainly appreciate any little card I get because it means if only for just a moment, that person thought of me; and that makes me smile. Now, I do love pictures and I do love homemade cards, but my favorite ones are usually just the ones I think are the prettiest (or the most interesting). In fact, I might place a good, modern looking card on my desk for months, just to look at it. And I don't worry if someone doesn't send me a card. There are plenty of people who never send Christmas cards at all but it doesn't really matter. If someone WANTS to send a card he/she will and it will be a nice surprise. I actually kind of wish I could always wait until the last minute to send my cards so that nobody would ever feel like they HAD to send me a card just because I sent them one. Similarly, I don't tend to get too stressed out if someone sends me a card and I haven't sent them one. I wish I could send everyone a card, but I just can't do it, so I simply assume that any friend sending me a card understands this concept.

I hope I brought a little holiday joy by mail to anyone who did receive my card. It brought me great joy to send it out. And I should forewarn people now that next year's won't be anywhere near as complex. I might have to go the opposite end of the spectrum and do something insanely simple. We'll see. A have at least 11 months to recover. :)

Happy 2011!!

The last five months...a really long post!

Whew. I can finally take a deep breath! I've had the longest list of projects for the past few months and I just finished my last project of the year. Of course since that involved sending out cards that reference my blog, I figured I had better do a blog update.

I've been super busy...busier than normal even! Of course I recognize being busy is a consistent theme in my life but this time it's not all because of work -- woo hoo!!! It's simply because I signed myself up for way too many "extra curricular" activities. I had actually been quite productive getting things done off my "101 things list" until around September when the chaos began. I'll have to blog about all my 101 list progress later and for provide an update on what has been usurping my time for the past five months (which seems to be pathetically how long I go in between posts...). Since August I created the end of year classroom gift for Addison's daycare teachers, helped my friend Jennifer plan and execute an entire wedding in two and a half months, prepared for and threw Addison a 4th birthday party, went on a week's "vacation" to the beach, participated in the RAMOM (Richmond area Mothers of Multiples) sale, celebrated Halloween and Thanksgiving, created my best Christmas card yet, designed little photo "books" of the kids, and even managed to get the house decorated for Christmas. That's a long list of things that in my good ol' days would have been done in no time. But considering my free time is significantly less chasing around three kids and working full time, it's quite draining doing such a big list of projects that didn't seem to end. But I have survived!!

The Class Yearbook
I started out my long list of crazy ideas when I decided it would be a good idea to make a "yearbook" for Addison's teachers at her daycare. Addison was in LOVE with her teachers and since she was in her daycare/preschool room for a solid year, it was certainly enough time to really get to know the other kids and the teachers. I decided I would take fancy photos of each kid and design a special book and present it as a gift. A few other parents liked the idea and decided to pitch in for the cost of the book. Unfortunately the time it took me to take and edit the pictures and design the book was more than I hoped. Luckily it turned out great and the teachers appreciated it. I even made a smaller copy for Addison so she'll remember all her friends and some of the other parents ordered a book for their kids as well. I'm glad I did it although I don't know that I'll be signing up for the same task at the end of this year! The only bummer is that my special lens for taking portraits broke! Literally, it just stopped focusing. Why, oh why must things break???

Wedding Projects
Right around the time I decided to take upon the yearbook project, my very good friend Jennifer got engaged and decided she wanted to try to make her dream October pumpkin patch wedding happen. That meant we had LOTS of wedding planning to do in a short amount of time if we were going to pull it off. For those following along, Jennifer is my amazing red headed, mural painting, super crafty, officer friend who is always helping me in some way or another. She wanted these cool poster-like invitations for her reception so I took the challenge to design an event type poster. I also created little "wrappers" that went around the posters to put invitee names on, and then I created these little "tickets" for the wedding itself. Those who were invited to the wedding portion got a ticket and Jennifer just attached them to the posters with a clip. Personally, the tickets are my favorite part! I even managed to find a place that could print them without charging an arm and a leg. Now, don't get me wrong -- I am still not creative enough to be a natural artist of any sort, so when I say I "designed" something I really mean I just "borrowed" concepts from other things I saw online and shuffled them up a bit to be what I needed. Thank goodness for the internet for some inspiration!

This is a view of the poster rolled up with the wrapper on the outside. The ticket for the wedding is attached.

This is a view of the poster for the reception. It's up on a cork board, but you get the idea. The actual poster size was 12x18".

As soon as the posters were done I needed to search for some flower girl dresses as all three kids were going to be in the wedding. We found the most perfect dress but of course it was discontinued and we were one dress too short. So the week long hunt began and I think I must have called every internet boutique out there in search of this dress. For anyone stumbling upon my blog or looking for some fancy dresses, I must call out two places I'd recommend. The first is www.pinkprincess.com. If you are buying a nice dress, I definitely recommend this place. First of all, who really wants to buy expensive kids' clothes over the internet without trying it on? Not only does pink princess have a wonderful selection and much better prices than competitors, but they also have free shipping both ways. How great is that? Worry free ordering. You won't find that type of deal at most other online stores. They were super helpful, speedy, and we would have never been brave enough to order the dresses in the first place if it hadn't been for them. The other place I'd recommend is a place called Christening Day (www.christeningday.com). I'm not joking when I say I called over 20 places searching for another size 3T dress. I even called the manufacturer. The message was clear -- I was not going to find this dress anywhere! But like a gift falling out of the sky, Christening Day responded to one of my emails and mysteriously managed to locate a size 3T dress for me. Literally, I did not believe this poor woman when she called me to tell me. But not only did she find me the dress, she also matched the lower price of the other two dresses I had already ordered from pink princess! This little boutique company gets the highest of customer satisfaction points for me. Of course they don't sell a ton of things I need at the moment, but I'd recommend them if you are in the market for Christening gowns or other dress up outfits.

Once I had the dresses I had to find shoes. That made finding dresses seem like a walk in the park. I did try to warn Jennifer along the way that three toddlers (plus her two nephew toddlers) in a wedding would be unpredictable and insane. But she was willing to accept the madness they could bring. Crazy girl! Once I found shoes then I had to find a dress for me... Jennifer being the super laid back girl she is said I could pick any color and style I wanted. Little did she know I am simply incapable of making decisions such as this! I did manage to find a dress but I would like to point out a few things I learned in the process:
1) Bridesmaids who wear JCrew dresses are extraordinarily skinny. Either that or I'm extraordinarily large and I'd like to think it's the former but either way it's slightly disturbing.
2) J Crew dresses at full price are insane.
3) If there is a J Crew warehouse sale in your neighborhood at any time, just wait until then to buy up any dress you need at a crazy discount -- it will be well worth it.
4) The world needs more burnt orange dresses, which shouldn't be too hard to do since apparently they don't exist.
5) If you've had twins and want to wear a JCrew silk dress, make sure you have some spanx.

Once the attire was all squared away, I took engagement pictures for Jennifer and her then fiance, RJ. It was fun to go out and take pictures but I quickly realized how fast the sun sets in the fall. Our start time got delayed so we didn't have much light for good photos but a few turned out okay and it it was fun to get to hang out with them.





My last wedding assignments included coming up with the favors (caramel apples -- YUM!), making acrylic cake toppers out of ancient shots of Jen and RJ when they were younger, and making some pointing signs. Oh, and in between I threw a shower for Jennifer and even managed to make little pumpkin brownie bites for little shower favors. Fortunately my mom helped assemble all the tags and bags or I might have not gotten any sleep at all the week before the wedding. And everything else was relatively easy to get done. Jennifer had some great help from her brother and some other friends and family but the level of detail of all the amazing things she put together for the wedding is incredible. For as detailed as I can be at times, I would have never had the energy to do all the amazing things she did! The wedding was a small ceremony at a pumpkin patch. Since I was in the wedding I don't have many shots but I did get a couple candids from afterwards. The weather turned out great although it was a bit chillier than we had hoped. The reception was the next day at Jennifer's new house and it was a casual event with bbq, a kids' station, a fire pit for s'mores, a mustache photo booth, and a bunch of other things. My parents were lifesavers during the whole wedding event. They helped with the kids at the wedding and the reception and took them overnight both nights so I could go to the rehearsal dinner and stay late at the reception. Woo hoo!! Lots of fun.

I hardly have any pictures of the happy couple. But as I was chasing one of the girls I snapped this photo from behind the photographer.

Jennifer -- isn't she so lovely??

Jennifer wanted a cake room instead of a big cake. Notice the little acrylic cake toppers I made from old photos of Jennifer and RJ. Her friend made the cakes.

These are pumpkin brownie "gourds" I made for favors for Jennifer's shower. They were supposed to be pumpkins but at 2 am I had to make the fast and they more closely resembled gourds than smooth pumpkins.

These are the favors I made. Well, I only partially made them. I looked all over for caramel apples and even priced out making them myself. But then I realized I could just buy them at Kroger for a quarter of the cost. Much better idea!

Jennifer made a bunch of clay mustaches and guests used them in front of a white sheet and snapped a photo with a camera set up on a tri-pod. Cute idea!

Mackenzie posing with her 'stash.

This was the S'mores fire pit before the reception started. The fire pit turned out to be a great idea.

The kids' table.

Signs pointing to various activities.

Some of the details Jennifer did for the reception.

Tinkerbell Party

In the midst of getting ready for the wedding, I threw Addison a Tinkerbell party for her fourth birthday. The party turned out quite well and the only thing that was difficult was when I dreamed up a ridiculous invitation. I decided to cut out little Tinkerbells to put on the invite using a friend's Cricut machine. That's when I discovered that those machines were pure torture and clearly not meant for things like invitations. I didn't even do the full Tinkerbell -- I totally cheated using only a handful of layers and it still took way too long. Lesson learned. Here is the invitation:

Definitely not worth the time. I'll reserve crazy Cricut stuff for when I just need to make one of something. The inside had a cute little poem in Tinkerbell font.

Luckily the weather cooperated for the party as I simply could not imagine 9 girls (three of them my own) running around my house. It probably would have given me a heart attack. But with the nice weather I set up little Tinkerbell stations outside. All the girls got wings and a skirt as their party "favors" that they could wear at the party and take home with them. My mom made a Tinkerbell costume for Addison to wear which turned out to be quite adorable. I found the wings for all the girls on ebay (although of course a couple weeks after the party, fairy wings finally showed up at the dollar store...figures!) and my mom made the skirts out of some tulle. I had a necklace station where the girls put on tattoos and make necklaces out of string and fruit loops. There was a craft station where they made little Tinkerbell ornaments, colored Tinkerbell pages and could stamp and put fairy stickers on construction paper. There was a "treasure hunt" station where the kids could search through the sand to find little gems and coins. And there was a face painting station where my friend Jennifer painted all their faces. I was shocked at how well behaved and quiet all the girls were going from station to station. I've never even seen my kids that calm! To make my life easier I made cupcakes instead of a cake and rolled out some fondant and threw together some fairy-looking flowers and sparkle dust to put on top of them. I even found some tiny little Tinkerbell cake toppers that worked well. After eating cupcakes the girls got to play Fairy Freeze Tag. Of course the concept of freezing and unfreezing seemed to confuse them so mostly they just ran around like wild toddlers. All in all I think the party went quite well and unlike last year where I thought I'd collapse half way through the party, this year was a little easier. And much more economical than trying to go to one of those jumping places.

Tinkerbell cupcakes

Searching through the treasure chest.

Face painting!

Fairy Freeze Tag

Vacation
The week after Addison's party I went on "vacation" with my parents. I have vacation in quotes since I'm pretty sure that vacation as I used to know it will no longer exist for me. I suppose it was a break from work, which is always nice. But my previous definition of vacation would be anything relaxing. For that matter, my favorite vacations are tropical resorts where I can sit and do nothing. Perhaps an excursion of some sort, but it's hard to beat sitting in the sun, getting a tan and doing nothing. This vacation was not one of those! But it was definitely full of adventure and the girls loved every minute of it. My parents got a timeshare in Williamsburg for a week and that's where we headed. We went to Busch Gardens early in the trip and my brother and little sister were there to help out. Funny how it seemed to take five adults to manage those three kids. I discovered that Addison is a complete roller coaster addict. She simply could not get enough of them! She stared with fascination at the huge roller coasters that she won't be tall enough to go on for years and talked about how she couldn't wait to go on the one with the 90 degree fall to the ground. Her favorite ride was one of the "fast" roller coasters and I couldn't believe she went on it none-the-less rode it again and again. The twins, on the other hand, were petrified of everything. They wouldn't even take a picture with Elmo. My little sister somehow got Mackenzie to go on one very, very slow duck ride and we convinced Anika to go on the bumper cars (coincidentally Mackenzie wanted to go on the bumper cars too until right before the cars started moving she hopped out of the car and I had to make a mad dash to get her out of there). But that was it for the rides for them. We did take them on the carousel but they screamed through the whole experience although I think at that point they were simply too tired. Hopefully they like more things next year. At least they all enjoyed watching Elmo and his friends dance. Anika is still talking about how cookie monster danced for her.

After Busch Gardens we headed to Virginia Beach where the girls got to play in the sand and just loved it. Those were our big trips for the week but they also got to go mini golfing (something I don't recommend with two 2 year olds!), visit the Yankee Candle Factory, go swimming, and visit a few playgrounds. Lots and lots of excitement for them. By the time we got home I wasn't sure I could make it through yet another weekend with them. The whole family "togetherness" was a bit too much for them -- those kids were fighting more than they had ever fought before since they had been together for 7 days straight without a break. Even worse, the twins had started to pick up some of Addison's habits! Scary, scary stuff. Luckily they have forgotten all the 4-year old attitude learned from Addison so life is normal again. Here are some pictures of the adventures:

Sesame Street Live!

Anika's one ride...

Mackenzie's one ride...

Exhausted!

Addison loved the zip line at the local park. It didn't take her long to learn to swing across the whole thing.

Fun at the park!

Who knew a candle store could be so fun?

Having fun together...how sweet!

RAMOM sale
Right after vacation I had to begin my next little project, which was to get ready for the RAMOM (Richmond Area Mother's of Multiples) sale. Way before my crazy hectic schedule started, I decided a good incentive to help me clear out the baby stuff on the third floor of my house would be to sign up for the fall sale. RAMOM is the multiples group I belong to and twice a year they hold a big yardsale where sellers in the group can sell their kid stuff to the public. It's actually where I had gotten a great deal of my baby gear before the twins were born. As it turns out, among all my other "projects" I didn't really have any time to even think about the sale until after I came back from vacation. So when I came back I only had one week to unpack, organize, and label all my stuff.

Well, the whole effort took much more time than I was anticipating and I spent every non working, non-kid minute for a solid week getting my things together. It was a pain! Dragging all those bins from the third floor, tagging everything, dragging them in from my car to the school where the sale was and then having to pack up everything and drag it all back home...it was exhausting. I swore I would never do it again. Until I got my check in the mail at which point I determined that perhaps it *was* all worth the effort afterall.

Ouch! Of course part of the reason why I may have been so miserable at the RAMOM sale could have had something to do with the fact that it felt like my head was going to explode. Turns out somehow I got a microfracture in one of my front teeth. The crazy thing is I was JUST at the dentist a week or two earlier for my regular cleaning and the dentist had said everything looked great. But apparently, I guess, I likely had some sort of trauma to the tooth as early as my childhood and only now did the microfracture come about and/or bacteria finally made its way inside. At the time I was fighting the third cold of the season and my immune system that had previously been keeping the infection at bay could no longer handle fighting all of that. Looking back I now understand why on earth I could not seem to get rid of my colds! The pain from the infection was so awful that I actually would have preferred to go through a long and intense natural childbirth instead of having my head feel like that. Merely touching any part of my jaw was excruciatingly painful. I survived the weekend but ended up having an emergency root canal on Monday. And luckily the infection was entirely isolated in the root so the "tooth" I see wasn't affected at all. Thank goodness for that I suppose. It made for one very long weekend...

Meow! The girls are getting much better about being excited about holidays so I'm trying to be better about decorating and making the holidays memorable for them. I love Halloween and I figure it's only another year or so before the girls all want to dress up as different things so I should take advantage of when I can dress them as I please. So this year I asked Addison what she wanted to be and she declared she wanted to be a cat. Yay -- and easy costume! I toyed around with some coordinating cat ideas but in the end I decided we'd all be black cats. I just used some leotards and tights, found some cute little accessories at Target, and tried my hand at some face painting. I think it worked out quite well. I even decided to join in on the festivities!

Christmas Card Delight
About two years ago I came up with an idea for a Christmas card. I wanted to do the idea last year, but I just didn't possibly have the time or energy to attempt it but I spent most of this year *thinking* about doing it so I knew it had to be done. These days I don't get to allocate much time to being creative or sending out cards, both of which bring me great joy. So working on designing a cool Christmas card is quite fun for me. I have to admit I think this year's card is my best yet; something quite unique! The only down side is that my next cards simply won't compare but I won't let that worry me. I can't describe what the cards are like yet because I need to wait until they actually get mailed so people getting them can see them, but next year I'll definitely post some pictures. I've probably spent the majority of the last month working on the card in my free time. I am no graphic designer so in order to even attempt half of the card I had to look up online tutorials or help to figure out where to start. At least I learned a lot of things in the process!

Christmas in the air
I'm much more in the Christmas spirit this year than the last couple of years. And the fact that Addison is very into Christmas helps push that along. I actually discovered that not only does she remember Christmas from last year, but she remembers almost every detail with vivid accuracy. Clearly, Christmas had its impact on her. Early on she asked if we were going to have a "Merry Christmas" this year, unlike last year. Confused, I asked her why she would think we didn't have a Merry Christmas last year and she explained that we didn't have a Christmas tree up like my parents had. Well, we DID have a tree up, but I only put one up a day or two before Christmas and I didn't put any ornaments on it. The thought of trying to dig out all my ornaments from boxes was a little too much. But not this year!! Shortly after Thanksgiving we put up the Christmas tree (which was an interesting episode since every other sentence out of my mouth was something like "don't touch that, move back, it's not your turn, stop pushing your sister," etc.) filled with decorations and I put decorations all around the house. I even managed to get lights up outside! The kids love all the Christmas decorations so it's been worth it. I will try to remind myself this when I have to take everything down...

In addition to designing my Christmas cards I worked on a project that I made for my siblings for Christmas. I thought of something that would be a perfect gift (or so I think it will be, anyway). I won't give away the surprise here and say what it is but it took quite a long time. So between working on my card the gifts, I haven't done laundry, dishes, cleaning or anything like that in weeks. Even Addison started to comment on the fact that dirty clothes were everywhere. I've probably been up until 2 or 3 am every night for at least the past 8 weeks with the exception of a night or two sprinkled throughout. It's crazy, I know. But I've accomplished quite a bit and it's all self-driven so I really can't complain at all.

So this brings me up to to today. Except for finishing up some Christmas shopping, I should be relatively project free (non-work project, that is). Now my goal will be to get through the holidays and then clean my poorly neglected house, which I guess is a project in itself. But at least it has no deadline. And if you are wondering why I stopped checking facebook or calling or sending emails, it's because I've been a tad occupied. I've learned my lesson now -- no more trying to tackle a million big projects all at once. Well, at least not for the next month anyway... :)