Last July, I stood in the middle of Laurelhurst Park with a hot glue gun that had just seared my index finger, staring at a pile of leopard-print cardstock that refused to stay in a cone shape. My coffee was cold by 8:15 AM. Portland in July is basically a swamp, and I was trying…
Popcorn salt has a way of finding the smallest paper cut on your thumb and making sure you remember it for the rest of the afternoon. I sat on the linoleum floor of my Houston classroom last March 12th, surrounded by nineteen four-year-olds who had somehow discovered that Elmer’s glue tastes remarkably like the generic…
My kitchen table looked like a turf field had exploded on it last Friday night. I stood there, surrounded by neon green tissue paper and tiny black-and-white hexagons, clutching a lukewarm coffee while my twins, Leo and Maya, practiced their “victory slides” across the linoleum. We were twelve hours away from their 6th birthday bash…
The smell of wet construction paper and industrial-grade floor cleaner is my natural habitat, but nothing prepared me for the “Great Golden Retriever Riot” of October 12, 2024. Twenty-four first graders were vibrating with excitement because we were celebrating our classroom mascot’s “birthday.” I had spent $45 on generic cardboard cones that promised “one size…
Last Saturday, April 11, the rain in Chicago wouldn’t quit. My twins, Leo and Maya, were turning nine. Twenty-two kids in my living room. That’s a lot of sticky fingers. I needed a mario tablecloth for kids that could handle a spilled Red River of cherry punch without costing me my grocery budget for the…
My kitchen table looked like a crime scene involving a green glitter explosion and three different types of adhesive on March 12, 2024. That was the day I realized that jungle party hats for kids are the secret sauce to a successful double-digit birthday, even if I almost lost a thumb to a $15 high-temp…
Chicago winters never really end until May, so when my twins, Leo and Maya, begged for a tropical Moana-themed 11th birthday party on April 12, 2025, I had to bring the Pacific Islands to our cramped West Loop apartment on a shoestring budget. My biggest hurdle wasn’t the food or the music. It was the…
My Chicago apartment looked like a crime scene last October. Red corn syrup dripped off the kitchen table and onto my beige rug. My twins, Leo and Maya, were screaming with joy. They were turning eight. We had twelve kids coming over in two hours. I had exactly forty-two dollars left in the party fund….
My living room still smells like orange Tang and damp sneakers from my son Leo’s 7th birthday party last October, but the sound of twenty kids screaming “Blast Off” while shaking homemade cosmic rattles is a core memory I will never shake. I live in a perpetual state of party-planning chaos here in suburban Portland,…
Austin in June feels like living inside a hairdryer, but that didn’t stop my niece Avery from demanding a “vintage” Peppa Pig bash for her eighth birthday last year. I know what you are thinking. Eight is a little old for the pig in the red dress, but Avery has this quirky sense of irony…
