Sunflowers don’t care about the rain or the grit of a Chicago sidewalk. They just grow. Last March, when my twins Maya and Leo turned ten, I felt like a wilted weed trying to figure out how to celebrate two big personalities on a tiny $50 budget. We live in a cramped apartment near Logan…
My living room looked like a gold-leaf factory exploded. Glitter everywhere. Maya was crying because her crown tilted left. Leo just wanted cake. I had forty-seven dollars left in my bank account after the grocery run. Twenty twelve-year-olds were coming in three hours. I needed a miracle, or at least a lot of hot glue….
My living room looked like a Bluey-themed hurricane hit it last March 14th, and honestly, I wasn’t even mad about it. It was Leo’s 7th birthday here in rainy Beaverton, and if you know anything about Oregon springs, you know “outside party” is a gamble you usually lose. I had twenty screaming kids coming over,…
Twenty-two second graders vibrating from a sugar rush is exactly what I call a Tuesday in Houston. My classroom looked like a glitter bomb hit a NASA gift shop. I had silver streamers hanging from the overhead projector and moon-pie crumbs ground into the carpet. We just finished our “Blast Off to Third Grade” bash,…
My kitchen currently looks like a red and blue glitter bomb went off, and I am sitting here with blue buttercream under my fingernails trying to figure out how I survived Leo’s 7th birthday last Saturday. If you are a mom in the Portland suburbs like me, you know that a “simple” backyard party is…
My kitchen in Marietta still has a faint, waxy smell of artificial blueberry and scorched plastic from the time I tried to DIY a centerpiece for my son Leo’s 8th birthday back on March 14, 2024. I thought I was being a genius by melting down old blue candles and pouring them into actual Lego…
Last Tuesday, I found myself sitting on the floor of my messy kitchen in Portland, surrounded by approximately three hundred tiny purple butterfly confetti pieces and a half-eaten string cheese. My youngest, Sophie, who just turned four, had decided that her “Encanto” party needed to be, in her words, “exactly like the Casita.” This is…
My kitchen floor still has a faint teal shimmer from last March, a permanent reminder of the time I thought 22 six-year-olds and loose glitter were a good mix. Lily wanted a “real” underwater kingdom for her big day, and I was determined to figure out what do you need for a mermaid party without…
My living room looked like a black-and-red cyclone hit it last May 14. I stood there, clutching a lukewarm cup of coffee, while nine ten-year-olds vibrated with pure, unadulterated energy, and for a split second, I wondered if my neighbors in the West Hills were actually going to call the cops this time. Leo was…
The living room floor was a disaster zone of pink ribbons, discarded wrapping paper, and one very confused Golden Retriever on the morning of March 15. My daughter, Chloe, had officially hit the seven-year milestone. We had just survived the “Bow-tastic” bash with eighteen first-graders from her school here in Denver. Most dads would have…
