Stovall Elementary gets humid in April, and by the time my class of twenty-four kindergartners finishes lunch, the room smells like wet pavement and lukewarm chicken nuggets. I usually lean into bright, loud themes for our classroom blowouts, but this year, I needed something that wouldn’t make my head throb before the three o’clock bell….
Twenty-two second-graders in a single classroom during Houston’s peak humidity is a recipe for disaster, especially when you add lukewarm hibiscus tea and sticky macarons into the mix. I have spent fifteen years teaching at a local elementary school here in Texas, and if there is one thing I have mastered, it is the art…
I remember the original Y2K. I was twenty years old, wearing a neon green puffer vest, and genuinely worried that my microwave was going to gain consciousness and start a revolution. Fast forward to March 12, 2024, and I found myself in the middle of a different kind of crisis in my Atlanta living room….
Leo stood in the middle of our cramped Atlanta kitchen on October 12, 2024, and told me he wanted to be undead for his ninth birthday. He didn’t want a soccer party. He didn’t want a trampoline park. My son wanted to host a full-blown apocalypse. As a single dad who once accidentally bought a…
My living room in Buckhead looked like a Smurf had exploded. It was October 14, 2023, and I was exactly forty-seven minutes away from eighteen kids descending on my house for Leo’s third birthday. I had decided on a “Whale of a Time” theme because he was obsessed with anything that swam, and honestly, whale…
March 14, 2025. The day my East Austin bungalow turned into a hostile territory of sharp plastic. SXSW traffic was snarling up I-35, the humidity was already creeping toward an aggressive 80 percent, and my older sister Rachel was having a full-blown meltdown on my vintage velvet sofa. She had a massive joint birthday party…
The “Wheels on the Bus” melody has been rattling around my skull since 4:00 AM, and I blame JJ entirely. Being a single dad in Atlanta means my social life is mostly playground politics and figuring out which grocery store has the cheapest juice boxes. Last October, my daughter Maya turned five. She didn’t want…
March 14, 2026, was the kind of Austin afternoon that starts with a breeze and ends with everyone sweating through their linen shirts. My best friend’s daughter, Chloe, was turning ten, and she had specifically requested a theme that felt “grown-up but still cute.” We landed on “Some Bunny is Ten.” I spent three weeks…
Peppa Pig Party Blowers – Fun for 5 minutes or total waste? My grandma dilemma! @hailey_partymom: Okay, GINYOU community, I need some real talk from my fellow party pros (and even the “fly by the seat of your pants” planners, bless your hearts!). I’m neck-deep in planning Owen’s 5th birthday party – yep, my youngest…
My Chicago apartment looked like a brightly colored tissue paper bomb had detonated in the living room. Pink, yellow, and teal scraps clung to the rug, the sofa, and somehow, the ceiling fan. Twins Leo and Maya were officially turning two. Between the skyrocketing cost of groceries and Chicago rent, I refused to spend a…
