The Right Stuff - or Teddy's ROCKETSHIP Party

My kid was born in February. You know, coldest, darkest, stinkin'est month of the year February. Lounging around on my balcony in the sunshine and warmth - which is totally what I'm doing now -  I can barely remember how lousy it is to be cold.

So Teddy's parties will probably always be of the indoor variety (unless he adopts an official birthday, like the Queen. Which actually isn't that bad an idea, come to think of it).

Without the option of bouncy structures and water-based outside shenanigans, themes are where it's at. His first birthday was a Mustache party. His second was  Monkey V's Robot. And never happened on account of copious amounts of sick (yay for birthdays in flu season. No wait, not yay.) And his 3rd was a ROCKET SHIP party. And it went a bit like this:

There were magnetic invitations to stick to the fridge, like this:

'Member the magnetic photo-backing stuff from this post? I loves it (in fact it might be my new favourite medium. It's my new clear plastic chopping board or contact paper) 

And star cookies like this:

And planet-decorated water bottles like this:

And an extraordinary cake, (made by my good chum Sarah, whom, it turns out, is a bloody genius cake decorator) like this: 

 This lousy picture doesn't do justice to the extreme awesomeness of the thing, or the fact that it was three different flavours of deliciousness and had marshmallow fondant and a picture of my kid on it.  For reals.

There was a photobooth wall, like this:

Made out of a plastic dollarstore tablecloth; with white stars and red planets -cut from plain white printer paper and recycled (as in, from the recycling pile) card - and double-sided taped onto the tablecloth.

There were (dollar store foam-core board) cut-outs of astronaut helmets, like these: 

 And a felt helmet for the birthday kid. Like this.

There were COSMOnauts  for the grown-ups (see, like cosmonaut, but with Cosmopolitans, see? see?You guys, that still makes me smirk) And Cosmo-NOTS for the non boozing crowd (that makes me smirk too! hearts for puns.)

We made the cocktails by the pitcher, using  large slugs of vodka, triple sec, lime cordial and low calorie cranberry juice, over ice, the cosmo-nots were orange juice, cranberry juice and a dash of lime cordial over squished up ice.

There were, I vaguely recall, other decoration type things too, and food maybe? But I (of course) forgot to take pictures.
At any rate, Teddy was fairly thrilled, and hijinx were had and the photobooth pictures turned out well. So I'm calling it a win
My sweetheart turns 40 (!) in a months time and I'm scrambling for an idea for that (his last two parties were superfuntimes, with secrets and red balloons and Grumpy Old Men).

Shiny, lucky (and kinda rambly)

You guys! This weekend has been super shiny and awesome. With tree acquiring and salt dough and tree trimming and bunting making and friends and dinner and cocktail hat making and and secret santa-ing and a hors d'oeuvre and 25 people squeezed in here. SHINY I tells you!

The tree was acquired early Friday morning from City TV's Charity Tree Deal. Whereby the kids at City fill up Dundas Sq with Christmas trees (and this year a SUPER jaunty tenor choir - LOVED those guys) and sell Christmas trees to raise money for The Food Bank. Which just works for me on a bunch of different levels. Firstly of all, the getting up early and walking down there, all bundled up makes it seem like an occasion. And the square smells so GOOD. And we get our tree and we get to make a donation to a charity that's a pretty big deal for me.
As an aside, can you imagine how difficult it would be to have to worry about something as basic as feeding yourself or your family? I'm IMMENSELY grateful never to have been in that position; but you guys, I feel like all that is is luck.
Where was I?
OH YAH! My sweetie carried the tree home two and a half city blocks for us, hoisted over his SHOULDER. And oooh la la but that man looks good getting his lumberjack on. Mouth-dryingly yum. Then of course we had to grump and wrangle about where exactly we were going to put it. (I won!).
The bear was WIGGLY with excitement about the whole process. And was an enormous help putting the lights on the tree. He's available for a modest fee if you're looking for a short blond to help out by standing on wires and cooing
"Izz so boot-a-wul (beautiful). You see? you see? Ours tree is Boot-a wul!"

Next came a foray into the unknown for me. We made salt dough! I'd never done it before, but I saw the how-to over at Aunt Peaches (have you been over there? YOU SHOULD! Really, she makes beautiful stuff, but even better, her writing is extraordinary; I went for the paper flowers and stayed for the laugh-out-loud-with-a-dash-of-heartbreak storytelling. I'm a fan.)

Anyhow, the bear and I whipped up a batch of salt dough gingerbread chaps. Only some genius (me) decided to add a bit of food colouring to the dough. They turned out the same anemic, fleshy pink as my legs after a long winter. Not cool. Creepy in fact. Like a trayful of nekkid faceless people. But we painted them a nice gingerbready colour on Friday night and we're all agree to never mention it again.


On friday night I also made a bit of bunting,

And some smooching paper birds.

And Saturday morning the bear and I made craft paper gingerbread guys to decorate for our secret santa shindig.

And lastly I got WAY overdressed for that self same party. See:

And I made a cocktail hat! Well technically I stuck 3 dollarstore coasters on a dollarstore headband and painted them black. But I'm totally calling it a cocktail hat! See:

It was a fun time. And you guys are all invited for Our New Year's Soiree!

Hey as an aside, I worry a bit about sounding smug when I write about the nice stuff in my life. BUT, I AM lucky and writing it down helps me remember that I am, and it helps me to pluck the shiny, awesome moments out of the drab ones. That said, I TOTALLY won't be offended if you skip the Lucky Me posts!
x

Grumpy. Old. Men.

A while back I dropped a teaser for the Grumpy Old Man party that I threw for my sweetie's birthday. Now I'm finally getting 'round to the rest of it. Firstly of all I wanted to site my sources, I totally stole was completely inspired by this idea here.

This is the invitation I threw together (but in the interests of full disclosure I should say that nobody actually got these, everybody knew the plan before I could so much as turn my printer on, and the guest list kept growing, which was awesome) BUT, If you do your own grumpy old man party and you want to use these just shout.
The plan was to print these on cardstock and line basic dollar store envelopes with newspaper print paper ( real newspaper is a bit grubby).

The inside text read:

Wear your pants THIS HIGH
Order the prunes
Say "whippersnapper" and mean it
But most of all come and celebrate (My Sweetie's) 39th Birthday like a

Grumpy Old Man

The Plan was for everybody to dress up as grumpy old men then meet up at the local 24hour, all-you-can-eat Breakfast Buffet for brunch and hijinx, then go on to play a spot of mini golf (in deference to the bear and my lousiness at actual golf!)
Our brilliant chums outdid themselves on the dressing up front, here's some of the gang

The transformations were pretty incredible, this gent is actually my very pretty friend Sarah

Mr. And Mrs. Turd Ferguson gave the performance of the day.
And it turns out that my brother is actually probably going to look pretty good as an older man.

Are you wondering about the birthday boy? Well, the day's theme was surprise for him, and while he WILL dress up under duress (because he's the best ever) I didn't make him this time. So he and his bestie (who had to come from his nightshift) looked like adorable whippersnappers!


If you've got a powerful curious about the rest of the pictures you can see my facebook album here.

The Birthday Bear

Here's what the bear got up to on his birthday...


But NEVER FEAR... dun dun DAHHHH... Monkeys V's Robots is a GO for Saturday 20th. Come hell or high water. I can't wait to show you guys the STUFF. (I have a squillion cupcake flags all ready to go and banners and bunting and yadda yadda yadda!)

Hey, stupid hats aside; the sight of my sweetie's hands on the bear's funny little almost-bald head just makes my heart chirp like a happy bird. I really am a lucky.

The Invites! Squee!

The invites are all ready to be handed over. Remember the guys from this post? Well here's where they ended up:



And you guys! I'm kind of in love with them. The slightly skewed angle of the monkey's smile gives me a happy. It was a complete accident so I can't really take credit for it.

I printed them out at the photo service in the pharmacy/drug store. The yellow behind the robot ended up way more yellow than the orange that it looked on my screen. Which almost caused me to wig out, but I think I like it better like this. So YAY!
Finding yellow accessories and paper napkins and balloons and STUFF looks to be easier than finding orange ones. So also YAY!

I came home with my printouts in my sweaty paws and stared at them mumbling "what to do what to do what to do?" with a slightly glazed look; until inspiration struck and I decided to make a double sided sammich board style thing.
Like this, see?



I did a bit of cutting and sticking using the blank cards I picked up at the dollar store a while ago and my brother's VERY expensive glue (which Elliot if you're reading this, I haven't seen. uh uh. Nope. Maybe goats ate it? Or warthogs? Maybe?).

Anyways, the whole shebang fits flat in the envelope and useful information stuff is on the other card.
Teddy and I are going to go give them out tomorrow and I have to say I am THIS excited about the party. You guys should totally come! There'll be CAKE!
x

Monkey Magic, Robot Wars

Versus

Confucius, Aristotle, Nietzsche. Luminaries throughout the ages have all pondered the same immortal question...

"DUDE? Would you rather have a MONKEY or a ROBOT?"

Now that question is the theme for Teddy's second birthday party. And you guys are, of course, all invited.

I whipped up these fellows to grace the invitations, once again reminding myself why graphic designers go to university to learn that stuff. I'm still not completely happy with the monkey's eyes but I think that they look OK ish overall. For a rank amateur using free software. I mean, you can tell what they are right?

I had to restrain myself from giving the robot scorching laser eyeballs and pointy, ripping/crushing teeth. As you might have gathered, I'm on Team Monkey (simian 'til I die bro). My sweetie is a robot guy. I'm pushing hard for Teddy to be a monkey guy, but it's not looking promising. He says "'BOT", I don't really know where he picked it up from, and my sweetie swears blind he hasn't been coaching him.

It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life... and I'm feeeeeeeelin'...

tiny bit hung over 'acshully.*
Last night was SO much fun you guys! Chums and chocolate and cheese and a spot of very good champagne (thank you lovely Mark!) a super New Year's make.

I made heaps of truffles, something I love doing, coating little balls of yum in more yum is really satisfying.
Here's what was left of them this morning as I (as blooming always) forgot to take pictures of them when they were all artfully arrayed,



Our chum Ian is a vegan, so I whipped together some Reese's PB cups inspired truffles sans dairy. And some almond and dark chocolate ones too. If you've a hankering for the recipes just let me know and I'll post them.

Our chum Ali brought cheese aplenty and caused something of a feeding frenzy. Mmmm cheese. And while we had intended to play Monopoly, we didn't get around to it, on account of the riotously fun times.

I hope you guys had as awesome a time as we did and are feeling as all "HELLS YAH!" about 2010 as we are.
xxx
*apologies to Nina Simone!

Oh HAI!

Turns out when I said "tomorrow", in that last whiny post thur I actually meant "In exactly one months time".
Yep.

(oh hey an awkward silence!)

So, how the devil are you? Been doing anything fun? Like turning 3-stinking-1 and having the bacon lung?
I only ask 'cause that's mostly what we've been doing.

Firstly though, Dapper Hat Day! It was fun, there was ice-cream and enough sugar to induce slight nausea and the shakes.
That morning my chum Kate and I went shopping for chapeaus at Wildhagen, a hand-crafted hat joint on Queen st. It's lovely and it just happens to be above a ribbon shop, making it pretty much a perfect storm of establishments-that-I-am-into awesomeness. You should go. Right now.

Dapper hats were found and purchased. and lookit here they are in ACTION. The action of being hats...
Doesn't everyone look fine! and can we take a quick moment to observe how cute Kate is in that hat? See, ador-ibble!
there are a few more pictures here.
Notice that there's no picture of MY dapper hat? Well, here's why... my hat was my bird day present. So after I'd worn it that night I made my sweetie HIDE it. For reals.
I know it sounds a bit stupid but this way I totally got to SUPER enjoy it three times. Firstly with the shopping for it. Secondly at the D.H.D ice cream slurping and thirdly with the whole anticipation/present opening thing.
So dapper hats... fun times.

After dapper hat day came... THE TORONTO ZOMBIE WALK! Which gets a whole post all to itself. Because hey, it's my damn blog and I have a hour to kill while the bear is napping and I am avoiding cleaning the bathroom.

Operation SSSH! - Mission Accomplished

YAY! I can finally let the kitty out o' the sack.
It was my sweetie's Birthday this Saturday. He turned a million and Saturday was his actual birthday birthday.
So I threw him a party. A surprise party. And he was ALMOST surprised. Which is good enough for me.

Firstly there were the invitations.
It turns out there is a reason graphic designers go to graphic designer school. Who knew? My amateurish effort...
And the wording said:
For anybody that cares, I used Picnik (the photo editing site) as I don't have any design software and I'm all with the lazy. The font is pupcat and the balloon I hacked from here.

So I made invites. Then spent the next month obsessing about the weather and the many ways that everything could go horribly wrong.
I also bought red stuff. Patterned red table clothes (of which I forgot to take any pictures), red cutlery that I did take pictures of...
red napkins (see above). Red side plates and red meat.
I spent the two days before cooking up a storm and stashed everything at my brother's house.
Figured out a way to get Andy to the island and me there first. So far, so The A team.

Saturday dawned all perfect weathery, I went into a panic-driven flat spin (this is totally what gave me away).

My lovely chum Britt rocked up to help with the logistics and the heavy lifting, which is a teensy bit ironical as one of the bags actually weighed more than her. We were running late and I was wigging out and making a squeeeeeeeee noise through my ears instead of doing anything productive, so Britt called a cab and hustled us down stairs.

We got to the ferry terminal. Now, if you're in the UK you might not know that this weekend was Labor Day weekend (they don't spell Labor with a U on account of how they're wrong wrong wrong). There was an air show on. The island is the perfect spot to watch said air show. The ferry terminal was busy. Very very busy. Assholes to elbows busy.
More squeeeing as I realised that WE would be lucky to make the 12.45 ferry (the one the guests were supposed to be on) but then it occurred that they were also likely to be late. So I relaxed a smidgen.

We got over, and went racing for the BBQ area that I had picked out 3 weeks before on one of my reconnaissance missions. To find a group of roughly 35 people already ensconced. "NOOOOOOOO"
I didn't like my chances against all 35 of them and while I would totally back Britt in a brawl, Elliot is more of a skater than a fighter these days. So Britt went racing over to the contingency spot and she stood guarding it while we hefted the stuff over. Sterling work she did too, seeing off a group of invaders with nothing more than stern looks (and possibly a little muscle flexing).

Next I did some more flapping and Britt blew up the balloons that would theoretically lead our guests to the meaty fun times. Then she raced off and distributed them liberally. I did a bit of clucking and tweeting and moving things around pointlessly. Then Britt hung up the rest of the decorations. She really did an awesome job and I would probably still be there, crying softly, without her help. And she wore the most gorgeous dress ever. Fact. See:

We got mostly set up. Folks arrived, I changed into something that wasn't literally dripping with my own sweat, had a bellini and waited for my man.
Who arrived via the cunning and subterfuge of our chums Ian and Kate.
And
All was well.
My Sweetie says he had his best birthday ever. Meat was cooked and eaten, pooches were played with. My dog ran the length of the island to find us (that's a whole different story).
The bear ate his own substantial body weight in ribs and other meats. Much champagne was quaffed. Good times were had.
And the pictures?
Uhhh.
That's were it all falls to pieces...
I did take this one of my three favorite creatures, and it does pretty nicely sum up the kind of day it was...