Last week I shared photos of my girls prepping for a last-minute birthday party for a friend.  The joy we all found in scurrying around to prepare was increased when our friends arrived.  It was a perfect evening.

And yet, very little about it was technically perfect.  I didn’t have any paper cups or plastic forks.  I went through several recipes before I found one I had all the ingredients for.  The house was barely tidy.  What was perfect about the evening was our willingness to do our best before the party and when the party started, we all wholeheartedly gave ourselves to enjoying it.

I remembered this post and realized that I’ve learned a lot in the past 18 months.  Many lessons have been imposed upon me by the realities of caring for eight children, but I’m so thankful I’ve learned to relax and enjoy my guests, refrain from apologizing, smile and visit and focus on making people feel good about themselves.

Gratefully, my lavender shortbread cookies and this citrus lemon cake with lavender frosting carried the day in addition to the chocolate cupcakes and cake our guests brought with them.  Everything looked and tasted delicious.

The very best part of it was our family’s common goal of making my friend’s birthday special.  It wouldn’t have been a common goal if I’d been more worried about how things looked than I was about involving my family in preparation.  Because I let them do the decorating, they were able to serve and to anticipate joy as much as I was.  Sharing the creative process without specific expectations or judgment allowed my children to claim my goal as theirs.  This goal was a blessing to her children as well, who felt good about being part of something special for their mom’s birthday.  We had two families who were content to relax, laugh, talk, give praise, and enjoy being together.  Ten minutes before our friends arrived I had a list of 15 things in my mind that I wished I could still pull off, but when we said good-bye I couldn’t remember any of them.   I felt so full and happy I wouldn’t have changed a thing.  We had done enough to let them know they’re important to us, and then we spent time enjoying their friendship.

I don’t mean to go on and on about it.  It really was a very simple gathering.  I guess I think that too often we get big grand pictures in our heads about what a party looks like.  The parties we see in magazines and on pinterest aren’t the kind of party that usually happen at my house.  Those pictures are inspiring in their beauty and it’s fun to glean ideas from them, but they can distract us from the real purpose of a party.  I always try to do at least one special thing to make it look nice (like the mini cake on a piece of china sitting atop a cake stand in the first picture), but I never manage to get everything perfect.  I don’t think we have to.  I think we need to be open, real, relaxed and more concerned about enjoying our guests than we are about what they think of our event.

If you’ve got someone you’ve been meaning to invite over but haven’t yet because you can’t seem to get everything to work out for a Perfect Party, try a Good Enough Party.  Be yourself, make your signature dessert, work as hard as you can for a little while and then take a deep breath and  smile.  Your Good Enough Party just might become a Perfect Party.  Ours did.

Our evening ended with the girls getting wagon rides from my husband while the older children spread streamers all over each other and my yard.  While they played my friend and I talked about real life as we took down streamers together.

And then the birthday girl got a little surprise from her son.

Like I said, a Good Enough, Perfect Party.

Hopeful Homemaker

Happy, happy Easter!  What a wonderful, joyous day it has been!  How grateful I am for the mission of Jesus Christ, for his perfect example, his Atonement, his resurrection.  My heart has been so full of happiness today.

I don’t have much to say about the week.  We spent most of the week sick, and by Friday were back on track.  We had a soccer season start this week with a win that felt awfully good.  Saturday was busy and on Saturday night my husband and I took our five daughters to see the BYU Ballroom Dance performance.  It was spectacular, as always.  My favorite parts of the evening were the moments when our two year old was so swept away by the music, the moves and the costumes that she would suddenly start waving her arms around or jumping and dancing.  It was adorable.

The unusual week changed our Easter celebration and I learned a good lesson from it.

The decorations were never unpacked.  Only my ceramic lamb made an appearance but it was enough.   I am learning that celebration is an important part of feeling joy.  It’s when we recognize the moment as something worthy of our notice, when we allow our hearts and schedules to focus on those things that bring joy.  Savoring such moments also provides us with joy down the road as we recall warm memories.

I’m learning that too often I envision productions when a spirit of celebration is sufficient.  I picture so much, my list gets long and struggling to live up to my own expectations can kill the celebration if I’m not careful.  I let go of the production this year and let our Easter celebration be simple.

Years ago I bought some old rail road spikes to give my children a better picture when they think of the nails in Christ’s hands, wrists and feet.  They joined our simple vignette as well.

Everything was simple.  The food was traditional but simple.  The day was gorgeous… sunny and mild with the sound of sprinklers  running and children talking.   Blue hydrangeas and vintage blue china made me smile contentedly.

I’m sure that next year my list of things to do for Easter will be equally long again, and I hope I’ll be able to accomplish many of them.  Still, it was good for me to see how things can play out with equal amounts of joy when I am unable to deal with the list.  I want to remember this lesson and take it to heart.

It’s spring break this week, and the timing was perfect.  I am always a relaxed mom when there’s no school on Sunday.  Tonight my brother and his family stopped by and we talked until late, knowing that we weren’t messing up a school schedule.  I’m excited to shift into low gear for the next five days.

Have a great week!
Jennifer

It’s called Cupid’s Arrow and here’s what you need:

Q-tips and straws.  I went to my local dollar store and found q-tips in different colors.  Score!  We used two boxes, or 800 q-tips for our class.  You also need straws, but I found that all the straws for sale at local stores, including the adorable paper straws we all love, were too narrow to fit q-tips inside them.  I ended up going to a local fast food chain and buying some milkshake straws for a quarter.

You also need a large bowl and a large blanket or tablecloth that you don’t mind having kids walk on,  because they will.  Oh, and I recommend a trash bag as well.  I’ve learned that taking an extra trash bag to any class party is always helpful, just like bringing your own dish towels to any church kitchen.

To play the game, simply lay the blanket out on the floor and place the bowl on one end of it.  Line the children up on the other end and give them all a straw and a fistful of q-tips.

When you say “go” they start putting q-tips into one end of the straw and blowing through the straw to “shoot” their arrow.  The goal is to get q-tips into the bowl.  We had two teams, represented by the two q-tip colors.  Stand back and let them shoot.  Seriously, you will end up with q-tips all over the place but they will have fun learning how to aim and get them in.  I found that the girls enjoyed this activity as much as the boys did.

The blanket on the floor is intended to help the kids stay back an equal distance from the bowl, but I found that their excitement caused them to get closer and closer.  I let them.  The point is to have fun, after all.  We didn’t end up counting which team won at the end anyway, because they just wanted to shoot the whole time.  At the end of each rotation we collected the q-tips from around the floor and dumped them in the bowl, which I dumped in the trash.

Before they went to the next station, we also did a quick Jello Slurping contest.  They kept their straws, sat on my blanket (to protect the classroom carpet), got a cup of jello and waited for “go.”  It was fun to watch them.

My daughter and her friend (and my two year old in the background who climbed on top of the desks while we were playing… I can’t keep that child on the floor!  Every time I turn around she’s on top of a counter, desk or table):

Cupid’s Arrow was a really fun game, so much fun that I wanted to play it later as a family but the night was just too crazy.  Instead, we’re going to have a q-tip war sometime soon.  I can just picture it:  ten people blowing hundreds of q-tips around my family room.  It’s going to be great!

Hopeful Homemaker

When it comes to planning many things, I have Han Solo’s problem.  I can imagine a lot.

What actually happens NEVER COMES CLOSE to what I can imagine.  This has always been frustrating to me, but I’ve learned over the years to handle it better, reminding myself that I’m usually the only one who is disappointed.  After all, no one else lives inside my head and sees the things I can dream up.  I remind myself that whatever actually gets done is usually just fine.  And then I move on and start imagining something else.

With that thought in mind, here’s what I managed to pull off on Valentine’s Day.   It was a crazy day, with a few hours spent at the school and a few hours of after school driving to do, but it worked.  It turned out to be a fun day, and my family seemed happy, which is really all I wanted.

cookie dough…

valentines for the kids…

Valentine dinner table complete with Pop Shoppe bottles and red striped straws…

vintage trophy shaped sugar bowls with little candy…

huge heart-shaped English toffee with pistachios for my husband…

Valentine table with balloons…

these sugar bowls make my heart happy…

experimenting with ombre in arranging balloons…

My favorite Marghab pattern, the Jacaranda tree, in pink on a napkin from Vera Marghab’s collection…

I always love the Valentine’s day m&m’s colors…

vintage pink basket with large glitter hearts…

And then the day was over.  I cooked ribs for dinner, one of our favorites.  It was a wonderful, busy, messy, sugar-filled day.  My list is tucked away for next year so I can review my ideas and go from there.  In all, it turned out great.  What I did was far enough out of our daily routine that my children felt like it was a special night.

Life is good, isn’t it?

HH

Wishing you a Valentine’s Day of simple joys, heart-felt hugs and love notes.  I hope it’s great!

Hopeful Homemaker

“It is by studying little things, that we attain the great art of having as little misery, and as much happiness as possible.” -Samuel Johnson

I feel like I’ve been studying a lot of big things lately, big things that leave me exhausted and trembling.  It’s time to take a step back and study some little things.

It’s Valentine’s Day tomorrow.

I have a lovely list of things I wanted to accomplish before this holiday hit.  Some really fun ideas, some really thoughtful ones too.  But as happens all too often, life got in the way.  I remind myself that this really isn’t as big a holiday as the stores would have us think.  I didn’t want to do it to impress anybody,  only to bring to life ideas I have flitting around in my head, and to express my love for my family in fun ways.

As I sat with my hot chocolate and heart shaped marshmallows, I said good-bye to the big plans I’d made, and decided that tomorrow will be a day of little things.  Little things done with love.

Jennifer

I made my Christmas cards for 2012.   Strange?   Absolutely.  Wonderful?  YES!  I know I could just upload a picture to a template, type in a quantity and be done but for some reason I’m not ready to do that yet.  I still want to make my cards, but the past couple of years have taught me that my fall and winter season is always overcrowded and my cards end up being a source of stress (not until I’m half done with them, that is, when it’s too late to back out and upload a picture).  If I carried one thing forward from the holiday season we just enjoyed, it was  a determination to make sure that this year is better.  So I spent some time in January doing just that.

I’ll have a bit of work to do in the fall when I get them back out but it’s only to add the finishing touch.  All supplies for this, including envelopes and an updated Christmas card list sit in the box.   I made a list of notes to myself about what still needs finishing (add a greeting and a photo) and now I’m done.

There was something really nice about investing now in my emotional well-being down the road.  Something nice about preparing a gift for myself to appreciate in another ten months.  Something about doing it makes me feel more like I’m worth it, and it feels good.

Hopeful Homemaker

What a great idea, to punch holes in your cards and put them on rings, then add a cover.  If you view the original post you’ll find downloadable covers that are super cute.  Since one of my goals this year is to do something creative every day, making my own was a great idea.

I used leftover paper from my Christmas cards last year, which adds a reminder of the card I sent out in 2011.   I tried my hand at some paper rosettes, which were REALLY fun.  I’ll be making more of those.

I am thrilled to know what to do with Christmas cards every January from now on.  We can get these books out from year to year and see how people have grown.  I’m glad that I can take these little pieces of my friends’ lives and preserve them in a way that encourages us to look at them in the future.

So, even though today marks one month since Christmas, I hope you’ll find it helpful enough to file away in your mind for 11 more months.   {This was a project on my January to-do list.  I’ve had the cards on rings for weeks, but hadn’t sat down to just make the cover.  Hooray for a finished project!}

I was thinking that this would also be a fun way to corral all those valentines that come home from school and then float around the house for weeks.  You could use just one ring and let each of your kids have a little Valentine flip book of their own!  Wouldn’t that be cute?

I hope your day is great.

Hopeful Homemaker

Done and in the mail.  For as much stress as I felt over them, and for as long ago as I purchased the paper and planned them, I’m a little amazed by how simple they look.  But I do like them.

Here is my 2011 Christmas card:

I cut each card by hand, which was a small project, but not an unpleasant one given how much I liked the paper.  I was excited to find the greeting as well.

I’m grateful I got them done, because receiving Christmas cards is one of my favorite parts of the holiday season.  Right now my kitchen counter card holder looks like this, front and back:

With too many of these people, once frequent communication has become rare, something I hope to improve next year.  But even only with annual cards I feel grateful for the reminders they are of remarkable people with whom I’ve crossed paths, people who have influenced me for good.  It’s a wonderful part of Christmas.

And as for you, from our family to ours, “Have yourself a Merry little Christmas!”

Thanks for reading along.  Merry Christmas!

Jennifer

I feel more confident because I’ve accomplished just enough to think I might pull it all off, and far enough behind to feel terrified that I won’t.

I’m trying very hard to focus on what’s in front of me, to breathe, and not to worry about what’s three or four items down the list.

My desk is currently covered with three different projects.  Not the best strategy, but somehow I have to get them all done simultaneously, so there they are.

There are, however, a few highlights:

This week I learned how to do hair in bows, meaning to put a girl’s hair up in the shape of a bow.  Every one of my daughters has had something like this in their hair this week:

The above picture was at the end of the day when the left side had started to come out just a bit.  Below is a mini version in piggy tails.  So cute!  And I’ll even admit to doing my own hair like this in a half ponytail.  It’s so much fun to learn something new.

Today I had an hour’s notice that my daughter needed to be at an activity this afternoon with a dozen cookies to take caroling.  I decided to make a batch of E-Doodles to test the recipe and because I’ve been craving them.  They turned out great, and made enough for me to bundle up a few to give to a friend whose birthday is today.

I figure it’s better to be remembered with something small and simple than not at all.  It’s the best I can do today.  It also reminds me that I’d better get to work on the birthday we’re celebrating at our house on Tuesday!

My Christmas cards are almost done.  Relief.   BUT they still need me to put letters inside them (which I have yet to write and copy) and the envelopes all need addresses on them.  Stress.  I have a package I still need to put together and mail.  And a long drive to pick some things up.  And I’m supposed to be at the school to help with a Christmas party tomorrow.   More stress.

Look what I made last night!

They’re so cute I can hardly stand it.  I’m using them as part of some Christmas gifts that have to be put together by tonight.  I’m also doing something with chalkboard paint:

More on all that tomorrow.  I might be up all night long tonight but I have to get it done.

Tonight my husband and I are going to a holiday dinner for a company he does contract work for.  I don’t have time to go but am really excited to enjoy an evening with him.  I hope we can both calm down and relax for a couple of hours.  And I hope my children are kind to each other while we’re gone.

And that’s where my day stands.  I’m off to the craft store to buy a new glue gun because my daughter borrowed mine for a project at school…. and didn’t bring it home.  It’s now nowhere to be found.  I’m sure she’ll be disappointed when her allowance reflects the purchase price of a new one but we have to learn these things somehow, right?

I hope your day is going well!

Jennifer