Summer is almost here (well, not according to the actual calendar, but we live in Texas so anything not Christmas is almost summer). For the Hergenraders that means Uncrustables straight out of the freezer, way too many nights eating on BerryHill’s patio, and lots of birthday parties.
The twins and Mike are all in June, the new baby will be here in late July, and Catie turns six in August. That’s a lot of celebrating. And with a new Hergenrader arriving smack-dab in the middle of the summer, I’m guessing we won’t throw birthday parties like we usually do.
Except for the summer the twins were born, we’ve always had DIY birthday parties or “in-house” parties. The alternative to an in-house party is a hired one at Pump It Up, Gymboree, or any of the various tea room/dress up/make-over places that make a killing primping up little girls in questionable outfits. Actually any place that agrees to host your birthday party makes a killing, but really, the amount you pay for your birthday girl/boy and 20 of their friends to jump on inflated plastic is nothing compared to what you spend putting together the in-house party.
Seriously, I’ve done the math. DIY = more expensive. Always. And I’m not even talking about the time it takes.
First, there are the invites. The invitations for in-house parties are astronomically more expensive and time-consuming. I blame myself. I love graphic design and writing cute couplets that pair near rhymes like “two” and “pool.” Hired parties usually provide little postcards that they’ll mail out for you. You do the math. Hours searching for paper, days fighting with the printer, nights lying awake wondering if “cake” and “celebrate” rhyme or clash. Or dropping off a list of addresses at the roller rink.
And then there are the decorations–another sand pit of time suckage. The hired places have this covered with kid-sized tables in bright colors. At our house, we have a huge wood table that only looks festive when artfully draped with white tulle curtains from IKEA and dozens of hand-cut hearts or flower petals.
Oh, and activities. Of course, if you’re at Monkey Bizness or a guided tour of The Museum of Natural Science, the entertainment is as easy as writing a check. The in-house party? We once hosted a cupcake party for twenty four-year-olds. The party plan was to decorate cupcakes with the thirty bottles of pastel frosting I had made. This activity didn’t last long enough for the straggling late-comers to find their seats. The kids spent the rest of the party killing Catie’s new birthday fish with too much food and testing the weight limits of our swing set. I learned my lesson for the next year–plan enough activities for a week of summer camp and you might have an hour of party time.
Counter-intuitive as it may seem, even the food is easier at a hired party. You’d think that moms would feel guilty for showing up at Chuck-E-Cheez three minutes before their kids own party and relying on Chuck E’s dancing skills to be sufficient celebration for their little darling. Not so. At hired parties, moms have pizzas delivered and slap down cakes that are still in their HEB containers. It’s like a rule– the mom has come to terms with the kind of party she’s throwing, and she’s not going to pretend anything else by dyeing her own buttercream.
Given that new baby in July, I’m seriously considering the hired party. Showing up with my checkbook and HEB cake sounds nice even now, and I’m still not in the “I can’t be pregnant another minute” final stretch.
The downside is that I actually like the DIY parties. I really think you get out what you put into something. The kids help get ready for their friends (“don’t stick your fingers in that buttercream I said!”). It’s so time-consuming that planning DIY birthday parties ends up being most of our summer activities. And it’s constructive. And fun.
We’ll see.
We may have to return to the regularly scheduled DIY parties in the summer of 2011.
Just go ahead and call Westwood now and you can relax and start planning for 2011!
But if I didn’t do DIY parties, where would my stock of fabric paint, measuring cups, random recipe cards, football easter eggs, planted pots, paper flowers, and 8 extra beach balls come from? No doubt, they are harder — thank you for listing the pros and cons.