Live, from the Gaping Maw of Incompetence

The dreaded bounce house party.

*not really that dramatic of a pause*

I’m not a party person. I suck at party planning, decorating, all the stuff that makes good parties. Also, my house? Not exactly “party clean” on a daily basis, you know. But, we must think of the children, right? So a party was had.

The kids did have a blast, and I even caught them all in one picture – I just had to let the picture run for 30 seconds and pretend I wasn’t shooting video. Honestly.

The first part involved weeks of transforming a disaster of a storage/junk room into an actual studio/craft room that people could see and even enter. The process will probably be a whole other post, but here is a snapshot of what happened. It is actually all kinds of awesome now, and completely finished. Well, I’m going to paint the new door. Don’t hold your breath for white, either. This is my room, after all.

I made a nifty slideshow of part of the cleaning process, but it doesn’t want to post. If you really want to see it, click here.

There was OCD level cleaning of the entire house, and minor repairs and paint touch-ups were done. Whatever paint that was, it did a good job, but was certainly not one of the type that clean up easily with water. I found that one out the hard way. The only thing that got this stuff off (that I had around, anyway) was direct blasts of Goo Gone. My hands look normal now, but still feel really weird, and this was two days ago? Maybe yesterday. A blur I tell you, total blur.

The Boy wanted a baseball themed party, with a bounce house. The bounce house he picked out was in the shape of a giant humvee. That part was easy enough, but I thought after putting all that cash into the bounce thing, we’d go homemade with the cake this year. Big mistake. Huge. I always have sucked at decorating cakes, and practice isn’t making perfect at all. Liars, whoever says that crap.

I first tried skating by with just cupcakes that look like baseballs. Even I could do that, right? Kinda…fortunately my friend Jean showed up and took over the icing part, thought I did those red line type things. They do look like baseballs. They. Do. NOT FAIL.

Boy informed me that birthday parties also have cakes, though. A square cake like a baseball diamond. Once again, I overestimated my abilities, and even procrastinated baking the cake until this morning. Red Velvet cake. Boys utterly delighted that the batter looked like a big bowl of blood. Yes, that is the corner of a box mix. I told you I suck with the cake thing. I made the icing from scratch, so bite me.

Transfer of cake to board for decorating – did not go so well. Kind of a lot of it stayed in the pan. I got out a spatula and carefully reconstructed the cake.

In spite of my obvious MacGyver-esque ability to manage this situation, the husband realized it was time to run to Kroger.

I still finished my cake, dammit. It is bad. It is not my worst ever. Nobody ate any. Bastards.

There was much bouncing and Wii playing and lots of friends and the party in general did not fail. Now I have six months off until the next one.

Oh, I might have stuck some googly eyes on the bounce house. Oops. Check out the Googly Anarchy Group, there are quite a few new additions this week, all good!

Finally, my birthday is in like 5 or 6 days, and it looks like I have to give up my dream of a chainsaw yet again. I don’t know why everyone is so against me having one. Help, help, I’m being oppressed!

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Tags: birthday, party, cake, googly eyes, craft pit, home improvement, chainsaw