I hope you had a nice holiday – it’s always a bonus when it falls on a Friday and makes a nice long weekend for travel and visits with family. And the obligatory sparkler shots, of course.
I spent the majority of both five hour drives we had this weekend studying (even by flashlight), and I read one chapter by the pool – but other than that, I stayed away from the books for a few days which was nice. That also meant filling in some of that time with other things that I haven’t been able to get to these days. I made F’s invitations which you could say are a little bit late in coming out – but they are being delivered into the cubbies of her classmates this morning which is probably more than enough notice for a casual Saturday get together.
This loose “theme” came about because F really wanted a Frozen party, and I, well, I really didn’t want a Frozen party. I’m quite sure we could have run with that theme (despite the fact that it is summer) and we are hosting the party on the lawn of a park, which means no birthday table to cover with Frozen themed paraphernalia, no movie screening, no Frozen soundtrack playing in the background. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.
I wondered for awhile if that made me a bad mother – she is the birthday girl after all, and she’s mildly obsessed with the movie. But when I really drilled down into what she wanted to do during her party – have games and award medals, play on a playground, eat sno-cones – well, none of those things really needed to be branded by Disney to work. I asked her if we could have a (Frozen) Sno-Cone Party instead, and she agreed. As long as there were games. And medals and trophies. And she would be getting Elsa colors on her sno-cone, naturally. Deal.
Her one request for the invitation was sparkles, so that’s where the giant sparkly sno-cone came from. I found a really cute sheet of red, white and blue striped paper at Artmart that seemed perfect for the paper cone wrapper, and then I went to Michael’s for the red, white and blue beads and glitter. I was going for sparkly ice in the three traditional sno-cone colors, and I think it turned out pretty well. I made the backgrounds red because that’s F’s very favorite color, and she approved. I thought she might want to help me glitter them up, but after obliging me for five minutes or so, she opted for cousin play instead. I added some red and white baker’s twine five’s to the back, and hand wrote the party information.
It’s kind of tough for me to scale back the preparations this year, but I’m doing it. I had so many decorated cookie ideas floating around in my head when I was working on those invitations. But this will be simple – I’ll make her party hat (an annual tradition), we’ll pick up breakfast foods and coffee to go, and after games (and medals and trophies), we’ll all get sno-cones from the candy shop in the park and enjoy them on the sidewalk.
And there just might be a Frozen balloon in the mix somewhere…
