An Outline of Events From 6/4 through 7/6

(or, where I've been for a month)

Introduction: Summer Hits Hard

I. I turn 30.

II. I continue my running career

III. Timm gets a new job

IV. Summer Fun

Introduction: Summer Hits Hard

 By way of explanation, summer came. I was plodding along, going about my usual business, when Wham! school was out and Bella was home every day. All day. Were you aware this happened every June? Cause it kind of sidelined me. Here's the thing: (I say 'Here's the Thing' a lot, I think.) Social interaction drains me. (I am an almost-agoraphobe after all) Even when the social interaction is enjoyable, fun, and energizing, when all is said and done, it drains me. I only recharge in solitude. (As grandma used to say, solitude is restorative, and it is) So suddenly, Bella was home everyday and I was thrust back into full-time motherhood of two small girls who bicker and squabble at least as often as they play cooperatively. And Fiona, she alone could wear out an army in a day. She never stops, never slows, never quiets. It's go, go, go, and yammering away all day. So anyway, I found that my days with the girls were about all the social interaction I could stand. At day's end, when they were finally in bed, I just wanted to be alone and bask in my own company. No emailing, no commenting, no blogging, no phone conversations- I was done. Tapped. And for 2 1/2 of those weeks Timm was out of town, so it was single motherhood for me. Yikes. But I've taken a month and adapted a bit. So here we are.

I. I turn 30.

I did, last month. June 18th. Thank you to all who sent well wishes and notes and gifts! It was a wonderful birthday. It had the makings to be disappointing because Timm had to leave town the morning of my birthday. Luckily, my parents came into town the day before so I got to spend it with them. It is wonderful to be with your mother on your birthday- especially when you have my mother and she takes birthdays seriously. I even got to go on a rare date with Timm the night before he left. The day of my birthday I spent with mom and Linda, doing the kind of things I rarely do, namely: shopping, a spa pedicure and out to lunch. Then we went out to dinner with Linda's family. All in all, it was a great day, a great milestone birthday. I highly recommend celebrating with your mother whenever possible.

II. I Continue My Running Career

I've continued to run 3 times a week for the last few weeks and I love/hate it. Running is a fickle, fickle friend. Two days ago I ran for 2.5 miles and I felt like I was floating on air. It was amazing. Tonight I ran 2 miles and I felt like someone was hitting me with a hammer the entire, arduous time. Terrible.

Some of the highlights: when I got my spa pedicure the woman asked me if I was a runner, judging from a purple toenail. When I answered her in the affirmative, it was one of the best days of my life. Plus, it was my 30th birthday, so win-win.

A few days previous, I had to relieve some of the pressure in that toenail by stabbing a sewing needle under my nail bed. Repeatedly. Like, all the way down the whole nail bed. The weird thing is, it didn't even hurt.

Tonight, the toenail fell off. I thought I had salvaged it, but nope. I have a good 'nail in training' going on now. That's actually what they call the nail bed underneath that toughens up and eventually grows out to be a regular nail, months later. I feel validated.

III. Timm gets a new job.

Yep.

IV. Summer Fun

Just kidding! 

I'll tell you about the job now. It's pretty freakin' exciting if you're Jessie Tanner. Which I am. So I'm pretty freakin' excited.

Fortuitously, proving that it's all in who you know, Timm got a job with Carolina's Healthcare. The Young Mens President he is a counselor to gave him a heads up about an opening as a trainer for physicians. It's still unclear to me what exactly he will be doing, but it involves training physicians in technology. Or something. What I do know, is that for the first time since I met Timm 9 years ago, he will only be working 1 job. One solitary, splendid job. (He has always worked between 2 and 4 jobs. 4.) I also know that it will be a 50% increase over our previous sad salary. We don't even know what it will be like, but we plan on seeing a lot more of each other, having a family day together once a week, paying off some debt and eventually even, dare I say it, saving some money. He starts on the 18th, so we have a week together before he begins his new career.

And in the mean time we are keeping busy with all kinds of summer fun. Which I will try and detail and chronicle as the summer days wear on.

Bella's Book Party

Here's the thing: I have a lot of opinions about kid's birthday parties.

I don't do characters.

I won't send kids home with a bunch of crappy trinkets their parents either have to find a place for or surreptitiously throw away.

I also won't send them home with tons of candy they will relentlessly beg their parents for.

I don't want a dozen kids bringing a dozen presents for my birthday child on top of everything they've already received from us, grandparents, aunts, uncles, family friends.

I don't think you need to spend a ton of money for kid's parties, and I still think simple is best.

Handmade is best.

Creativity is best.

I want them to reflect genuine values or interests that we have.

 So that said, here is the party I put together for Bella. I am fortunate that she is tractable and still trusts all my ideas. I just pitch my idea with excitement, and she's on board. 

And thus, the book party was born.

 Invitations:

I bought a few children's books at Goodwill for buy one, get one free and ended up using them for many things for the party. First, I cut and then sewed them into simple flap envelopes for the invitations. For fun and interest I mixed and matched the front and backs of the envelopes from different books.

The actual invitations were downloaded and printed from Family Fun here .

 Decor:

I relied mostly on books and other props we already owned for  the decor, and used pages from the books I bought at Goodwill to make several banners with some bias tape.

(Doll I made and an elephant Michelle made for Bella's birthday)

I just piled books onto a plate rack in my kitchen and then strung it with a mini book page banner I made with some thin double-fold bias tape.

I made this banner from inspiration here.

I love the way it twirls and spins all the time. It's like art in motion.

Above the window I made a 'Happy Birthday Bella' banner with a scrabble font, with a large book page pennant banner beneath that.

And under that, a book page wreath from this tutorial.

Warning: It took forever to make. And it's still not done. I had to stop because of time constraints and I ran out of hot glue. This was by far the most time consuming part of the party preparation.

Activities:

I set up the table with some activities to keep the kids occupied while we waited for everyone to arrive. It generally takes about 20 minutes for everyone to arrive and I can't stand having a dozen kids run helter skelter all over my bitty house. I put out a bowl of scrabble tiles for the dual purpose of cuteness and manipulatives for the kids, and was surprised how much they played with them, spelling words.

I printed out kindergarten-level word searches (a favorite of Bella's) and some Dr. Suess coloring pages to keep them busy. They loved them!

 

After everyone arrived, I split the kids into 2 groups. One group stayed at the table and made bookmarks, all with craft supplies I had on hand: markers, foam stickers, scrapbook paper, paper flowers, ribbon, and rubber stamps and ink.

Meanwhile, I helped the other group with a 'Book Treasure Hunt' I made up. 

I started by exclaiming that books were all treasures- of knowledge, imagination, adventure, and experiences and that we were going to find some of the treasures in these stories.

I made up 10 different clues that I glued in the back of each book. For instance, the first clue was "This friend should not be about while your mother is out!" (The Cat in the Hat) I gave them the first one, so the next clue was in the back of The Cat in the Hat and they had to work together to figure out all 10 books in order. Sometimes they could guess from the title, sometimes someone had read the book, and sometimes I had to nudge them in the right direction.

It was definitely most fun for the kids who were proficient and liked reading. (Bella loved it.)

I made these nerdy treasure maps to try and reinforce my somewhat contrived idea. At each number they wrote in the name of the book for that clue.

Their 'treasure' at the end was their favor bags. (More on those later-)

The third activity was probably their favorite.We played a book version of a cake walk. I scanned and printed full page book covers of some of our favorite books. I also printed smaller versions, like these fit on a sheet of paper. I laminated the full-size sheets and used them for the spots for the kids to stop on.  I used the smaller ones folded in a paper bag as the 'call books'. (They moved around the books to They Might Be Giants album, 'No'.)

The best part was when their book was called, they each got to pick out a book to open. On the invitation, I asked the parents to bring a wrapped book for a book exchange in lieu of a gift. They were so excited to pick out a book and that everyone had a gift to open at the party. I was thankful for meaningful gifts for each of the kids and that Bella wasn't left with a pile of cheap toys she doesn't need.

Food:

Once again, I kept it simple. I love when I see huge dessert buffets at parties on blogs, and I love dreaming of various treats to make and how to arrange and display them. However, I don't want to spend a ton of money and more importantly, I don't want to feed the kids 50 kinds of sugar.

Small water bottles, covered in old book paper.

I ended up making cupcakes and a cake because I wanted to make sure we had enough. There were 13 kids and I wanted leftovers of my favorite cake in the world.

For the cupcakes I used the thumbnail versions of the book covers we scanned and used them for cupcake toppers.

Favors:

I cut off the bottom of a paper bag and sent it through my printer to put my quote on it. Then I zigzag stitched the bottom closed, and after filling it with goodies, stitched the top closed.

I bought some Dr. Seuss pencils on Amazon, printed some bookplates from here and made some bags of 'Book Worms'. (Just enough of a treat that they won't be begging for it for days on end, and bookplates and pencils that they can actually use. Plus a new book!)

And the grand total for the whole party was $53.37 total. Not too bad!

Best of all, Bella had a great time with her friends. I gotta say, it's a whole lot of work for an hour and a half party! It made me think, what have I started? I've done a party like this for the last 4 years, but I don't think I can do one every year for both of my girls! Not that I have any shortage of ideas though...I already have 3 or 4 ideas I'm batting around for next year.

Coming Soon

Yesterday we had Bella's Book Birthday Party, and I think it went very well. It was cute, anyway. I have loads of pictures and details of the whole event to come, so stay tuned!

Birthday Badge

Friday was Bella's 6th birthday, and for the occasion I made her a birthday badge. I took pictures as I went and thought I'd share them with you!

Here's what you'll need:

a Crystal Light lid (or similarly sized piece of plastic or cardboard)

Fabric scrap at least 5" in diameter

(2) 3" scraps of batting

1/4 yard pleated (or ruffled) quilt binding (you can buy this by the yard in the fabric section of your craft store)

(2) 5" pieces of ribbon, 1.5" wide

3.5" scrap of felt

9" ribbon, 1/4" wide

Flat back craft pin

hot glue gun

clear-drying craft glue

(note: whenever I say to 'glue' something, I am referring to hot glue, except for the one instance when I specify clear-drying craft glue)

Begin by making your birthday message. I chose to embroider 'birthday girl' (in the font 'Elise') because I wanted both of my girls to be able to reuse this year after year. Alternatively you could do several other things: cut their birthday number from felt and glue it on, cut and glue a felt monogram, stitch either of those things, or use fabric markers to write your message.

After you've prepared your birthday message, trace your Crystal Light lid lightly with a disappearing fabric pen or a pencil, so you can make sure the placement is correct. Then cut around that line about an inch on all sides.

Cut your batting into (2) 3" circles. (This is just approximate- you want it to fit on the lid.) Glue one of the pieces to the outside of your Crystal Light lid. Set the other one aside for now.

Now we are going to glue your fabric onto the lid, covering the batting. First glue the sides of the lid, working on opposite sides to ease the fabric onto the lid until you gave gone all the way around. It will look like this:

Then go around, gluing the excess fabric to the lid.

After that is glued down, glue your other batting circle to the inside of the lid.

Next, we're going to glue the pleated quilt binding to the inside of the lid, covering the batting you just glued down. Instead of the pleated quilt binding, you could also ruffle a ribbon or a piece of knit fabric. Glue it to the back of your lid, working your way around, making sure that you overlap the ends about 1/2" to ensure coverage and to hide your ends. You're going to be gluing the stitched portion of the binding, so that the pleats still show in the front, like this:

 

Now it will look like this from the front:

Notch your (2) 5" ribbons, and glue them to the back of the badge so the notched ends are on the bottom, overlapping like this:

Almost done! Now cut your felt scrap into a 3.5" circle, and glue it to the back of your badge so it looks nice and neat. Then hot glue your flat-backed pin to the middle of the felt, making sure it lies horizontally so the badge will hang the right way. (Notice the pin is parallel to the ribbons at the bottom)

After I finished it, I decided to glue a small 1/4" ribbon the the side of the badge, hiding any tucks or bulges that may have occurred when you glued the fabric around the back. I used clear-drying craft glue (Aileen's) for the trim. Then if you have a product like Fray-Chek, lightly apply it to the edges of the notched ribbons, to what else, prevent fraying. Otherwise you could very carefully apply a small amount of craft glue to the edges of the ribbon.

Voila!

Your birthday girl or boy is ready to announce to the world that it is their birthday and receive their deserved accolades and praises.

Have fun, and let me know if you make one!

Bella's party is next Saturday and I will share all the details, possibly with printables.