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
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