Princess Birthday Party - Part I

The next few posts will be about different elements of my daughter's fourth birthday party, as masterfully planned and executed by my wife. Like many four-year old girls, my daughter is very much into princesses. That made birthday and Christmas easy this year. Since Christmas is practically right on top of my daughter's birthday, my wife felt she wanted to do a little extra to make the birthday party special.

I don't think I've ever mentioned this before, but my wife and I both came from families of little means. Even though I've got a great job and work for an excellent company, we are still very frugal and budget religiously in order to put as much as possible into our savings. We save money by doing things ourselves instead of buying them or paying someone else to do them. Almost every single thing my wife did for the Princess Party she made herself.

Part I: Invitations

Rather than a typical rectangular invitation card, my wife cut stars out of cardstock, printed the party and RSVP information on the front and back, and connected them to wooden skewers to make little princess wands out of them. Here is the finished product:

I'm not sure how exactly she did the printing on these stars, but I've seen her send brown paper sacks through our printer, so this didn't surprise me one bit. The star is lined with pink glitter glue, and the bow on the handle was made from tulle (I had to look that spelling up, by the way...not how I expected tulle to be spelled) she had on hand from previous projects. 

Here's a closer look at the front of the wand. You can't read it all, but the strip of paper hanging down from the side is the RSVP information so parents could tear it off if they wanted to, before their own little princess took off with the wand in hand. 

This is the back of the wand. Princess party information, including dress code. :)

Bathroom Mirror

Without getting into too much detail about the foreclosed home my wife and I purchased last year, let me just say that there were many issues that came up with the house before we finally decided to go for it. I'm happy to say that most of the unknown issues ended up having "best case scenario" resolutions, but it was a stressful time nonetheless.

One of the smaller, yet extremely frustrating, issues that we experienced was that even after we were under contract to buy the home (meaning that nobody else could purchase the home unless we decided to drop out), every time we went to visit the house, something else was missing!

One time it was the shower head in the master bathroom. The next time, it was the stove in the kitchen! The next time it was the mirror over the sink in the half bath!! The only people who had keys to the house at this point were our realtor and the property management company, and the property management company said there was no way they could tell who had been in the house because they used the same exact key for every property all over the city!! Grrr.

...this is raising my blood pressure. I need to move on...

Here is the little project that my wife did to resolve the issue of not having a mirror in the half bath downstairs. She found this unique little mirror at a craft store in town:

The only problem with it is that my wife hates gold...anything. So we took off the back and removed the mirror. Then we spray painted it a glossy black, let it dry and put the mirror back in. Now it hangs proudly in the previously unoccupied space in our half bathroom.

Much better than the vacancy that previously adorned that wall over the sink. :)

Chalkboard Wall!

When I was in elementary school, there was a small flower shop at the bottom of our street, along with a few other small stores. Two of my older brothers were playing behind those stores when they discovered that the dumpster behind the flower shop was filled with flowers! They must have been too old to sell (the flowers...not my brothers), and while most of the flowers were falling apart or dead already, my brothers managed to salvage 5 or 6 dozen flowers, mostly roses. They took the flowers home and set them all over the house for my mom. Cool, right? My mom obviously thought they stole them until she heard the story. 

Anyway, I just wanted to point out that dumpster diving can be an effective means of showing your affection to those you love by acquiring things for them that they value more than the people who threw them away. More on this later...

I am personally a big fan of this most recent project of my wife's. She has been interested in painting something in our house with chalkboard paint for quite some time now. First it was the refrigerator. Then it was the kitchen table. We don't own a particularly nice fridge or kitchen table, so I was actually pretty open to it.

Then she settled on this:

This is the left wall of our dining room, and to the left is the kitchen. This wall is also shared by the pantry. After much deliberation about what she would paint to look like a chalkboard, she was determined to do this wall. It wasn't until after the wall was painted that it occurred to us that it's actually about the same size as a chalkboard. 

Here's a view from the front.

The washed out square in the middle of the chalkboard wall (keep in mind that I take all of these pictures with my smart phone when my wife isn't looking) is a picture frame with nothing in it. In reference to the story I told at the beginning of this post, I actually found that frame in our neighbors garbage can when I was taking my own garbage out late one night. It didn't have any glass or anything, and it was a glossy black. I didn't have to dive into any dumpsters for this prize, but it goes to show that a little care and creativity can extend the life of something that otherwise might have been considered disposable.

It's fun for me to watch a transformation take place in a part of our house that I wouldn't have given much notice otherwise. Although it just occurred to me we're probably going to have to paint over this again eventually when we sell our house. Yikes.

Little Girl's Purse

Here's an interesting little bit of information about my wife. For the six years that we've been married, I've watched her take on creative projects, sometimes intentionally initiating a pre-meditated project, and sometimes carrying them out on a whim. She has learned how to do so many new things. She's gone out of her comfort zone. She's failed a few times here and there, but she is constantly producing wonderfully creative things to make life more practical or just plain more enjoyable. 

However, every once in awhile I hear her reflect out loud about how she wishes she were more creative, or generally more competent at things she is already great at, like being a mother. With all of this goodness coming out of one person, I don't understand how she can feel this way. Therefore, I started this blog. Behind her back. :)

I know most normal people feel similarly at times, but I hope to show this blog to her someday and help soften the occasional feelings of inadequacy that seem to afflict us all now and then. 

Anyway...

I must admit that I don't get especially excited about some of the girly stuff my wife creates, but I can genuinely say that I am still impressed enough to take the time to post about it. My three-year old daughter didn't waste any time becoming a girly-girl. She loves to use Mom's shoes, headbands, lip gloss, cell phone, and especially...her purse.

My wife was already experimenting with a pattern for a purse she had found for herself when she decided she would make a mini-version for our daughter. 

What I didn't think to do when I was secretly taking this picture (in our bathroom upstairs while my wife was cooking dinner) was to include an object in the picture that would give you an indication of the size of this purse. Since I don't want to risk getting caught taking another picture with my phone, imagine that it's just big enough to fit a DVD inside. 

Unfortunately, I know absolutely nothing about the pattern she used or where she got it, but I'm sure you could Google a good pattern in minutes.

Here's a view of the inside from the top:

She used a different, floral-patterned fabric for the inside of the purse, and if you didn't notice at first glance, she even included a tiny little pocket on the inside that is the perfect size for one of my wife's old cell phone's. Now that's going the extra mile! :)

Babysitter Information Sheet

I realize I have the most uninventive and dull titles when I post on this blog, but the reason is that I want people to be able to find some of these things when they do a typical search in their browser. Forgive my practicality and venture on into the actual content for the inventiveness.

Sometimes I don't even realize my wife has made some cool stuff, and then it comes out of nowhere! For example, a few weeks ago we were about to leave the house for our weekly date night (well, almost weekly...let's be honest; it's hard to get out weekly). After I needlessly explained to the 14-year old babysitter how to use the TV, my wife whipped out this masterpiece:

When my wife turned her back to show the sitter the upstairs, I took out my phone and took a picture of this bad boy. One sheet of paper that has everything you need a babysitter to know. Complete with our plans, contact information, emergency contact information, do's and don'ts, etc. In case you didn't deduce the blacked out content at the top of the two columns, that's where the children's names are, and their age is what's in parenthesis. 

I've always been perfectly content writing a few important notes down on a post-it note when the babysitter comes, but I leave it to my wife to make things easier, safer, and a little cooler.

Little Chef Birthday Party

I don't really mean to, but I start to laugh every time a birthday comes up for one of the kids and my wife says something like, "Let's just have a simple birthday party this year."

Take my daughter's two-year birthday party. Since we already know we got her a play kitchen for her birthday, wouldn't it be cute to have her and her little friends come over and wear little chef hats while they play?

Why yes, that would be cute.

But then, of course, there has to be cake for the little chefs to eat.

And they'll need something to wash down the cake with.

And some simple homemade decorations...

but it would be so cruel to not make the kids party favors. :(

There we go. That's about right for a nice, simple birthday party. Oh wait, what if the birthday girl had her own little mini apron to go with her chef hat?! That would be so adorable.

I can't wait to see what my wife comes up with when she finally decides to go all out...instead of this simple stuff. :)

Sewing Organization

I am about as close as you can get to being six feet tall...without actually being six feet tall. I consider being (almost) six feet tall pretty average these days. However, I have the hardest time finding shirts that fit me because I have a long and slender torso, long arms, and a long, skinny neck. For as long as I can remember, I've had dress shirts in my closet that didn't quite fit me. If it was long enough for me to tuck in, the neck was too large (I suppose under the assumption that most men with long torsos have large necks); and if it was skinny enough for me around the neck, the sleeves were too short (men with skinny necks obviously must have short arms); and if it was long enough in the arms, it was too large around the mid-section (you guessed it, men with long arms presumably have larger guts).

After about four years of being married and just a few months after my wife really started getting into sewing, I had a brilliant idea! I grabbed three of my dress shirts from the closet that I've had for the longest time but practically never wear, and I asked her if she could take them in. She had never done that before, but it seemed easy enough. We had ourselves a fitting right there in our bedroom.

Fifteen minutes later, I had three new dress shirts that fit me perfectly. 

Speaking of sewing...my wife's sewing things have been stuffed in large bins and small cans all over our closet for the longest time, and her sewing machine was always tucked away until she needed it. Unfortunately, the thought of pulling everything out to work on a project discouraged my wife from sewing more than anything else. It wasn't even the difficulty of the projects she wanted to work on...it was the preparation. 

So, she found an old shelf, some empty baby food jars, and some hooks. 

She screwed three hooks into the bottom of the left side of her shelf and then screwed the lids of the baby food jars into the bottom of the right side. 

Now she has had to think of new reasons not to begin working on her sewing projects. :)