Evan’s 2nd birthday party is 12 days from today and I am at least three weeks away from being ready. It is unfortunate that 12 days is not actually 21 days. Maybe I can move the party to an alternate universe where numbers are read backwards. Or maybe I need to stop saying stupid shit like that and spend my time doing something productive towards this party instead. My problem is I did a bunch of super-early planning and got ahead of myself and felt really confident in my ability to finish up last-minute details at the last minute…except I forgot stuff like “plan a menu” and “hand out invitations” weren’t really last minute details as much as 90% of the actual party. Whoops.

For some reason, I seem to have a lot less free time this year than I did for his 1st birthday. I am totally baffled as to why that might be.

But the invitations I didn’t put in the mail are in my diaper bag to hand out tomorrow and I spent Sunday finishing up the banner I’d been planning to make for the last two months. I also realized I need to put away about four boxes of junk from my front two rooms, since anything glass or breakable or heavy enough to hurt a 2-year-old if it falls on them needs to be out of reach when I invite two dozen 2-year-olds to come run around. I am also considering two semi-sewing projects but I hate threading my sewing machine SO MUCH I might scrap those. I’ll make up for it with some extra balloons or something. Balloons make everything more festive.

Speaking of balloons, the theme of the party is “round things”. I’m a genius, I know. It will make a lot more sense – and be a LOT more fun – when it’s executed rather than just explained. This year is much more about the actual party/activities part than last year, but I can’t resist doing a little decorating too. Here’s some of the stuff I’m working on:

I scheduled the party for mid-afternoon so I don’t have to provide an actual meal, (although if some of our friends are still here for dinner I will order a pizza or two)(pizzas are round so I can pretend it was on purpose) but it wouldn’t be a party without food. And it’s always fun to plan food around a theme. So far, the menu consists of:

– Fruit salad made with round fruit/melon balls
– Caprese salad sticks
– mini meatballs
– pepperoni, round cheese & Ritz crackers
– roll up mini sandwiches
– truffles (made by my friend Erin who made the cake for my baby shower)
– round candy of various types
– cake (that I am going to attempt to make and decorate on my own)

Anything really obvious and/or delicious that I’m missing?

I have zero ideas for beverages, since most soda and/or alcohol doesn’t come in a round form. So I might just get regular soda and water and make cute labels. Or maybe round ice cubes. Or if I get REALLY ambitious, maybe I’ll try to make some bubble tea. Too bad they don’t sell that Orbit soda anymore. (Remember that stuff? I was OBSESSED with the orange kind.)

Clearly I still have a lot of work to do. But no worries. It’s not like I have anything else taking up my time.

If you’ve ever read my blog before, you might have noticed I sort of like planning and organizing small intimate casual parties for my kid or my friends.

So I decided to follow in the footsteps of my friend Audrey and throw a Baby Celebration Party for Baby Girl. Not a shower, because throwing yourself a party where you basically say “OH HAI, BRING ME PRESENTS” is unnecessary and kind of rude for a second baby (in my opinion), but I still wanted my daughter to know her pending arrival was just as exciting and celebration-worthy as her brother’s.

Of course, being 35 weeks pregnant AND the mother of a toddler is fairly exhausting. And the morning of the shower I woke up feeling like death warmed over. Really, seriously, painfully awful (in pregnancy related ways, not in contagious diseases sort of ways) and after rolling sugar cookie dough for only a few minutes I was almost in tears thinking about how much I still had to do before my guests showed up.

THANK GOD my in-laws and two of my very best friends Erin (from the wedding) and Erin (who wrote a guest post for me here and let me post pictures of her kid here) were staying with us for the party, because they – along with my amazing husband – did ALL the work for me. Even the night before the shower when I was still planning to do it myself they helped out stringing pennants and gluing craft paper. And of course Wedding Erin spent a ZILLION HOURS on an amazing – and incredibly delicious – custom themed cake. I, on the other hand, mostly sat in a chair and pointed at things.

(As a side note, I now know E is not only capable of following recipe instructions without my standing over his shoulder, but he can BAKE LIKE A MOFO. The thumb print cookies he made were ridiculously tasty – not a single one left over. He may live to regret letting that slip.)

It was especially nice of my in-laws and The Erins to help after I didn’t have blankets, pillows, food for breakfast or time to clean my rather disgusting bathroom before they got here. I’m not sure there was ever a time I was LESS prepared to have house(or any kind of)guests in my life. I used to be the hostess who not only had guest towels that coordinated with each room’s decor, but little baskets of toiletries, soaps, toothbrushes and tea waiting for them just in case they forgot or needed them. This time I barely got up off the couch to say “Hey thanks for coming!” I didn’t even manage to sort of clean up the new master bedroom before my party guests came over even though I KNEW I would end up giving a tour. So all my friends saw my literal dirty laundry.

As as far as having the new nursery done before the shower? AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

So in the end everything was awesomely awesome and I am really glad I decided to shower myself, even if it was a little overwhelming.

Of course, 50% of the reason I even HAD the party was so I could show pictures of my cute theme and decorations here on the blog. I promise to have those up soon. It will be TOTALLY WORTH coming back to check them out. That is, if you like that sort of thing. I apologize in advance for about a gazillion pictures if you don’t.