So my fun began in July. My middle turned 6 and asked for...wait for it...LOONEY TUNES. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find Looney Tunes in 2015? I think they stopped making that crap back in 1996. I did manage to find some discounted plates and napkins on a no name party website. I was able to coordinate the balloons and cups around that. The cake was the real challenge. No one...I mean NO ONE makes a Looney Tunes themed cake. And by 'NO ONE' I'm talking Walmart, Sam's, Ingles, Food City. I am too cheap to pay for those fancy fondant cakes. $35 is my cake budget...if your wondering why please re read the previous paragraph. So I explain to the poor girl, who was lucky enough to be working in the bakery 2 days before the party, that I needed a cake that they do not actually make but that I needed them to make. She looked terrified. I ended up saying just make a teal and orange cake. She still seemed a tad confused but I left 85% sure I would have a cake ready on the day of his party. So I still had to find cake toppers. Once again...I stress LOONEY TUNES is the hardest freaking theme. I paid $25 for 5 plastic Looney Tunes characters on Amazon. Yeah that so put me out of my 'cake budget'. GO ME. *sigh* Anyways, this party ended up being super cute. It looked like I totally knew what I was doing. Party #1 was done.
Moving onto Party #2. After begging my almost 8 year old to NOT have a pool party...we had a pool party. I offered everything. Chuck E. Cheese, Wallabies, Hands On!, anything so that I did not have to wear a bathing suit in front of people and expose my pale skin to the sun. I failed. The child who really doesn't even LIKE to swim wanted a pool party. And his requested theme, Pokemon. I admit this party was an easier one to find things for. Which is ironic seeing as it didn't really match AT ALL. I really dropped the ball on this one. I had way more options for plates, cups, napkins, cakes. But I ended up buying 2 packs of small pokemon plates and small cups and 1 pack of napkins. I thought I could just coordinate the colors of red and yellow for the large plates and cups. Can anyone tell me what 2 colors should do for Pokemon? I bought Red and Yellow. WRONG. SO COMPLETELY WRONG. My 8 going on 18 year old informed me that I was supposed to get RED AND WHITE. But this was the day of the party, so red and yellow it is. I did find pokemon candles that looked much much larger on Amazon than they did when they arrived. I also for some unkown reason ordered an ORANGE AND GREEN cake. Not even close to the colors of anything I bought. I don't even know why. I must have been really stressed out that day I called. I'm pretty sure it was sitting in car line with the baby singing me the song of his people at glass shattering pitches. All that mattered to the kids was that there was water to swim in and cake to eat. BOOM...Party #2 was a mismatched success!
I am currently planning party #3. It is in 4 days. Guess how much prep work I have done...not much. I did purchase a printable download pack on etsy that goes with the theme I wanted for the baby's 1st birthday. I am currently wondering why I do this time after time. This is a party that this child will not remember. I know what your thinking...PICTURES! Yes we all want pictures of these parties. I have exactly 8 combined of the 2 parties I just described. #1 Mom! But seriously I have cut out decorations for about 2 hours. It cost $8.88 for the download, that seems reasonable right? It took me 3 DAYS to figure out how to get the download to actually download. I thought I could do it on my phone or tablet. Nope...has to be a computer. And my laptop had to update when I opened it. Hear that? That's me banging my head on the table and asking why I do this to myself! So downloaded the pack and go to print. The printer is upstairs, and is jammed. I won't go into detail about the things I muttered on that long journey up the stairs. I think I shaved 2 years off my life trying to find the jam inside this printer. I finally gave up and closed all the openings, and as soon as I shut the bottom drawer it started printing. I literally did not DO ANYTHING except open all the possible port things. I didn't unjam anything. But I had my decorations and I headed down to hunt scissors. I found LEFT hand scissors. Why in a house of all Right handed people do we even have these? I don't even have the energy to try and figure that one out. So I get to looking through all these printed pages and I see there are treat bag tags with cute little sayings. And I debate back and forth for a good 10 minutes on whether or not I even want to cut them out and do treat bags. I am pretty opposed to 'goody bags' in general. But since I had already decided not to serve a meal I thought I could throw together some snack bags. I mean I have an entire pantry full of food that my kids tell me the LOOOOVE and HAVE TO HAVE, and then decide 90 seconds later that they don't like it anymore. So after some digging I have enough random snacks for 20 bags. So far....that has been the prep for this party. I haven't decided if I am going to make the cupcakes myself or outsource that. I'm about 99% sure that Walmart will be doing them.Seriously though, as stressful and unnecessary as this is, I would regret not doing it. Even when my kids pick the most difficult themes, their day only comes around once a year. And it isn't their fault that their mom sucks at planning or that I am not the best at decorating. All the color coordinating and stuff is irrelevant. All that matters is that they are surrounded by their family and friends, and that we get to eat cake! I can't believe that my boys are now 8, 6 and almost 1! I hope they look back and have fond memories of mismatched balloons and cakes and smile a little!
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