My kitchen currently looks like a Pepto-Bismol bottle exploded, and I am not even a little bit sorry about it. Last Saturday, June 14th, was my daughter Lily’s 5th birthday, and because I have two other kids—Sam is 7 and Maya is 11—my budget was basically non-existent. I had exactly $53 to turn our soggy…
Houston humidity is a beast that eats paper for breakfast, and I learned that the hard way on April 14, 2024. I was setting up my nephew Leo’s 12th birthday party at a picnic shelter near Hermann Park, trying to tape a “Platform 9 3/4” brick backdrop to a damp concrete wall. Eight boys, all…
Thirteen pre-teens crammed into a Chicago bungalow during a June heatwave is a recipe for a very specific kind of chaos. On June 14, 2025, my twins, Aria and Leo, hit the big 1-2. Turning twelve is a weird transition period where they still want the themes they loved at seven, but they want them…
My living room looked like a Peppa-themed tornado hit it last April, specifically on the 12th, which was my daughter Chloe’s third birthday. There was pink frosting on the baseboards, a stray balloon stuck in the ceiling fan, and I was nursing a lukewarm coffee while staring at the aftermath of twenty toddlers. If you’ve…
My kitchen table was a literal disaster zone on Tuesday, October 12, 2023, while I tried to prep for Leo’s fifth birthday. There was yellow cardstock everywhere, my 4-year-old was trying to eat a glue stick, and the printer was making a sound like a dying lawnmower. I had this grand vision for the perfect…
My kitchen floor was covered in silver glitter and black food coloring at 2 AM on a freezing Chicago Tuesday. Leo and Maya were turning seven. Twenty-one first graders were descending on my tiny apartment living room in exactly thirty-six hours. I usually cap my party budgets at fifty bucks. Period. But this year, my…
My kitchen counter in Denver looked like a glitter bomb exploded in a flour factory on the morning of May 15, 2025. My daughter, Lily, was turning eight, and she had one demand: a “pinkies up” tea party that felt fancy enough for royalty but safe enough for her rowdy younger brother, Leo, to attend…
My living room looked like a Koopa Troopa graveyard last Tuesday morning. There were red shells (red plastic plates, actually) scattered under the sofa, a half-eaten Yoshi egg (a green grape) stuck to the rug, and the distinct smell of lukewarm pepperoni pizza lingering in the air. My youngest, Toby, who just turned four, was…
Nobody warned me that turning twelve would involve so much glitter and dog hair. My nephew Leo decided that for his twelfth birthday on March 14, 2026, he wanted a “Legacy Paw Patrol” theme, mostly because he thinks the irony of middle schoolers wearing puppy ears is peak comedy. I spent three weeks scouring Austin…
Leo’s 11th birthday was a total blur of black belts and sweaty socks at the local dojo in Beaverton last March. I thought I had it all together until I realized I forgot to order the karate party thank you cards set until two days after the party ended. My kitchen counter was a graveyard…
