Moderation

Dan and Lisa are great friends for me to have. They both have the ability to calm me down. When I get a fantastic idea, they talk me through it. Between the two of them, reality and normalcy are introduced. I take a deep breath, and carry on as a sane person.

Big Sarah is trouble. Instead of demanding moderation of me, she takes my ideas to amazing and new unthinkable heights. We feed off one another. We work ourselves up into creative frenzies. And then we are off! Poor Dan is left in the dust wondering what everyone else is going to think!

Friday started off innocently enough. Big Sarah and I had a few errands to run. They were important errands, like going to the grocery store because I didn't have enough food in the house to serve dinner to my husband, my children, and my overnight guests. We also wanted to take 30 minutes to see if there were any cute princess decorations for the twins' birthday party on Saturday. Since I had already told Dan that I wasn't going to buy any more decorations, we thought we should get the decorations first so we could focus on the important items on our "To Do" list.

As it turns out, Party Mart is a wonderland of decorations. Big Sarah and I went a little bit crazy. We left with $53 of decorations and so many helium balloons that it was difficult to drive the car. And that was only our first stop on our new quest to turn my house into a Princess Palace.

Our next stop was to buy 4 foot tall Jasmine decorations. Much to my horror, the store did not have in stock a 4 foot tall Belle decoration. Did that stop us? Nope! We called every party store in Ottawa. Finally, we hit the jackpot!

Here are two examples of what we managed to procure (I didn't take pictures of everything):

Unfortunately, we had spent the entire day getting bigger and better decorations, that we did nothing on our "To Do" list. Including the groceries (Before anyone woke up, I had to run out to Tim Horton's Saturday morning and buy breakfast for my children!).

After we put the children to bed, Big Sarah and I had some wine and started to decorate. By the end of the night, Big Sarah and I were pretty tired and pretty drunk. But the result was worth the effort. Ta da:

We were pretty pleased and impressed with ourselves. This had been a lot of work and a lot of money, but we just knew the twins would love it! They would especially love that we had turned the kitchen into their very own ballroom.

When morning came, the twins raced down the stairs. And they were surprised to see the decorations (especially Bethie who, at first, didn't notice that we had put up a 8'x12' princess palace on the wall). Both girls looked at all the decorations, thanked us, and then delighted in the breakfast from Tim Horton's.

Big Sarah and I told each other "The kids expect magic, especially from us! The decorations are sure to wow the adults!". We eagerly awaited the party so we could show off our efforts to all the adults. Mum was impressed. No one else was. Big Sarah and I were stunned. Really?! Is this considered "normal" decorating? Are we losing our ability to shock and amaze?

Then we presented the cake:

That got the reaction we wanted!