arts n crafts

Entertaining Clients: Throwing a Birthday Party

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Some nice birthday gifts received from Catherine’s friends today and a wonderful party all around.

My wife did a lot to make it special and I was moved by the beauty of her happily getting lost in what truly was a labor of love…a commitment to excite and thrill our little girl.  

We stayed up pretty late the night before preparing hand-made decorations and favors in order to construct an “Arts & Crafts” themed party. She monogramed white oversized children’s oxfords with different colored fabric letters for guests to use as smocks they could use at the party and then take home. She also put together a “make-your-own party hat” station as one of the activities for the day and “sock puppet kits” comprised of everything from the sock with cardboard mouth pre-glued in to eyes, whiskers, spots and anything else required for the respective animal or creature-in-a-bag. These kits were packed in their goody bags as well. We both really enjoyed thinking of the animals and characters for which we spent hours cutting out their parts from sheets of felt and making a few of our own along the way.

The sample sock puppet my wife made was hilarious! It actually had a Muppet-like personality. Green yarn hair. Black googley eyes (complete with eyebrows), a long pointy nose and a long thin black mustache. I couldn’t stop laughing when she put it on for a trial run and made “Juan” immediately come alive with his Spanish accent and adult humor. 

Sources & Uses: Non-Traditional Outlets for Kid Stuff

Being a parent shopping for children's “necessities” like miniature shopping carts or  doll houses can make one feel a bit like an unwitting tourist falling victim to a rapidly changing foreign exchange market. I mean, come on... does miniature plastic fruit really warrant a $69.95 price tag? I recently purchased a build-it-yourself dollhouse. The dolls and miniature furniture to fill it cost almost as much as our real life-sized dining room set.

I ’ve now been finding it very useful to source child-oriented products from non-traditionally child-themed stores.  The impetus for this was my original qualm with paying $8 for what felt like a notebook's-worth of paper that was so narrow, my daughter and her friends couldn’t avoid drawing and painting on the craft table it was intended to cover... and the quality was akin to that of the roll of tissue-paper masquerading as an impenetrable germ barrier protecting our children's naked bodies on doctors' examination tables.

This is a copy of an email I sent to my play-date posse:

FYI for those of you with easels or craft tables: 

HP 24"x150 print rolls are approx 3xs the paper, wider, better quality and

less expensive (even with taking shipping into consideration) per sqft than the Melissa&Doug or ALEX-like brands out there…and require less frequent roll changes.

See below.

Regards,

Josh

Keep Calm

and

Carry On


Sent wirelessly via BlackBerry

Subject: Your Order with Amazon.com

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"HP Bright White Inkjet Paper (24 Inches x 150 Feet Roll)"
Office Product; $14.25
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"HP Universal Bond Paper (24 Inches x 150 Feet Roll)"
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"HP Recycled Bond Paper, 24 Inches x 150 ft Roll (CG889A)"
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Due Dilligence: Taking Great Activity Ideas Home

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Although I’m a big fan of spending time at the local pet store (AKA: The Free Zoo) and going on “Playground Tour 2012”…There are a lot of other things to do in the area.

This week, one of my best friends Jeff (who is also a professional Daddy) re-introduced me to Longwood Gardens. Like many other places I’ve visited as a childless-man, I was surprised to learn that there was a “children’s section”.

Longwood has an exhibit in the Indoor Children’s Garden “…filled with intricate water features, handcrafted artisan elements and engaging horticultural displays that invite children into an imaginative world all their own.” - www.longwoodgardens.org

Located in the center of these awe inspiring displays is a large stone fountain adorned with hand-carved dragons and surrounded by slate-tiled walls. A collection of buckets and small wooden-handled paintbrushes are made available for children for them to “paint” everything from the fountain itself to the cement floor beneath it…with water as the "paint" that temporarily darkens the surfaces.

As someone with large rocks lining their driveway and approximately 60’ of flagstone along their front walk, I immediately recognized the beauty of this interactive exhibit. The quick-drying “paint” motivates the children to continually create new designs or re-do patterns that have just faded… until you have to drag them away.

Needless to say… I bought 3 cheap paintbrushes at Sherwin Williams yesterday and am looking forward to Catherine’s reaction when I break them out this weekend.

So much easier to steal GREAT ideas from someone else than to think of them yourself. Whenever I’m at a loss for fun things to do, I guess I just need to get out with the openness to re-discover places and things I thought I knew.

Reminds me of the classic cure for “writer's block”.

Setting Up Shop: Stocking a Playroom

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My wife and I went to the craft store yesterday and bought a shopping cart so full of stuff (colored cotton balls and pipe cleaners to popsicle sticks and finger paints) the cashier thought  we were teachers and gave us a discount. Catherine now has her own supply closet in her playroom located in our basement...which we prefer to call: “The Way-Downstairs” (as an homage to “the way back” of the classic Country Squire Station Wagons that very few families were lucky enough to own in the 70’s).