Happy Birthday!

How to Bar Mitzvah on a Budget: PART ONE

This economic crisis has made everyone shaky. We're not unique in trying to save money in general let alone for a major family celebration. The difference between the every day and the celebration budgetting is that I like throwing this party on the cheap. If I won the lottery perhaps I would do some things differently, but honestly, probably not too much. It's so personal this way and relaxed, like us.

1. Be a chef:: it certainly helps to be able to order food wholesale and then to cook it yourself with a little help from your friends

2. Invitations:: design your own based on fancy-schmancy ones you found online and get a stay-at-home/graphic designer to recreate them and then be lucky enough to have found new bloggy friends who are both generous and awesome who will set you up with a printer.

3. Be a regular shopper at The Dollar Tree and IKEA:: decorations and cool cactus margarita glasses for $1 each, pots for centerpieces $2 each

4. Have a friend with a tent business:: where the words "for friends and family we charge..." are sweet words indeed

5. Know a great photographer:: who loves to take pictures even though she's really a school teacher (knowing that one of your best friends has used her almost exclusively for all her kids' pictures since they were babies)

Young man...

http://www.gq.com/

...we must discuss this naughty habit.

Over dinner.

Alone.

My Girl

...longs for her own home in the middle of trees with animals and privacy.


...likes to talk for the animals and always has them call me Mama.

Mom and girl time at a local tea shop


...told me that of course I can live where she does when she grows up. In fact, I can live in her mansion.


...isn't sure what she wants to be when she grows up but wanted to know if bartending was okay.


...is not always sweet or kind or loving but is always interesting.

we both love to watch the cream swirl


...has a deadly sense of humor.


...is not a morning person.


...marches to her own drummer.


...could not only survive forever on a desert island but also be fully accessorized within the first half hour.

...loves to sing.


...still lets me hold her hand as long as she's the one who makes the first move.


...still likes me even though I embarrass her sometimes.

Right Now, Right Here

from here

My intent with this blog has always been to be a kind of journal, filled with whatever was on my mind or tickled my fancy. I thought it could be about me, me, me. And I am a complete idiot to not realize that what "me" is still all about my children.

S is in the crapper again and AGAIN it's because of lying. Helping to shape a young person's character is exhausting. I thought it was taxing to my sanity that I had to say "Say thank you" or "Eat with your mouth closed" 4,507,243 times a year, all the while thinking to myself (and occasionally saying out loud), "It's not like I've never told you this BEFORE!" But that was just developing manners. Repetition is almost guaranteed to work. The success in correcting this behavior is a crap shoot (heavy on the crap). You can repeat the mantra "Lying about doing something wrong is worse than the wrong thing you've done" a zillion times since they are young enough to understand it, but still they try.

This time S's nontruth involved teachers and school projects and made up data for a science competition. In reality, making up the data was probably harder work than just doing it the right way. As my friend Lynn, put it, it would be so much better if he wasn't such an Evil Genius and that he'd use his powers for good.

He has been taken off the honor roll and, thankfully, that means something to him. Learning about honor first-hand might (pleasepleasepleaseplease) make an impact on him to help understand what building character means. I'm hoping it does.

But I've had to remind myself how hard these years are when your body is ahead of your mind in development. Everything is all confused. I can remember thinking to myself, I want my mommy and in the very next breath wondering WHY she treated me like SUCH A CHILD.

Anyhoo, even though I would love to have this blog be more about things like baking, decorating, and hell, even organizing under my sink (I find all that domestic shit so soothing...), I guess this is life for me right now.

And I hope you stick with me.