Mommin' It Up!

March 6, 2015

RSVP…

As I mentioned yesterday, April, or as we call it in our house BirthMonth, is nearly upon us. My kids will be 7 and 11 in a few weeks, and I’m not sure how to even process that.

Sam’s celebrating his day by taking a couple friends to a bounce place, but Kate’s having a full-on party. She and her BFF Rachel have close birthdays and they share the same friends, so they’re having a combined pool party together. And, because they are extremely great kids, they are asking the attendees to forgo gifts and instead bring a donation to the Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation, in memory of both of their maternal grandmothers.

I’m going to be ~~incapacitated~~ in recovery (from surgery, not from drugs) at the time of their party and won’t be able to contribute a whole lot to the day itself, so I offered to handle the invitations.

It just so happened that minted. emailed and asked me to take a look at their designs and share them with you!

minted. has a whole section devoted to birthday party invitations, and there’s a filter function that helps narrow down the choices based on size, theme, price, gender, and age range.

Here are a few that caught my eye:

The bookworm owl has zero to do with a pool party theme, but it immediately jumped out at me because it is perfect for Kate and Rachel – they are both total bookworms and for some reason have a thing for owls at the moment! So cute.

I like that this is pretty neutral in the theme department and that it just looks fun!

This would have been perfect for either of Kate’s last two parties at the skating rink! And they’re slightly nicer than my lame attempts at photoshop.

Until Rachel’s mom came up with the brilliant idea of a combo party, I thought this was in my future. Shudder!

I love this one – it might be a winner!

While I was browsing, I couldn’t help but notice a few invitations that would be perfect for Sam…

Next time you’re looking for party invitations, thank you cards, stationary, decor, or gifts, head over to minted. But beware – everything is so cute that it’s impossible to choose!

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This post was sponsored by minted.com. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

March 5, 2015March 5, 2015

I’m at it again.

Because I didn’t have enough going on, what with my upcoming surgery and instant menopause, imminent birthmonth, taking over as president of the board for the kids’ swim team, and, you know, holding down a full-time job and keeping two kids alive, I have decided to plan another trip to Disney.

Now, for normal people, that last line item there wouldn’t be a big deal – an all-inclusive Disney vacation can be booked and paid for within 20 minutes.

But we all know I’m not normal.

I’ve got to research the hell out of each and every decision, and I have to do it NOW because dining reservations need to be made 180 days in advance (okay it is not required, but every good neurotic Disney planner does this) and we are there!

Before I could make dining reservations, though, I needed to make a trip plan and decide which parks we were going to hit on which days. This meant scouring the internet for crowd calendars and daily lists of recommended parks and parks to avoid. And every crowd calendar says something just a bit different, so as soon as I decided on one thing, I read something to make me change my mind.

So, with the 180 day deadline looming, I finalized the schedule last night. I made a list of the date, time and location of each reservation we’d need and ranked them in order of hardest- to least-hard-to-get, and arranged my laptop and credit card on my kitchen table so that when the alarm went off at 5:50 this morning (reservations open at 6am!), everything would be set to go.

And everything was set! Andy and I woke up early and were waiting on the clock to strike 6, and when it did, we saw this.

That’s right, 181 days to go. I was a day too early. So, we’ll have to do the same thing all over again tomorrow. But at least I will have another day to make sure everything is exactly right!

And I only have 121 days to figure out the FastPass+ system. Hold me.

March 3, 2015

The General Pressure of Being Alive or 10 Things That Will Absolutely Kill the Ones You Love

I have a problem.

I work on Facebook, but I am about to the point where I want to quit Facebook.

On Facebook I am always sharing stuff from my work page, and it’s 99% positive, encouraging, or funny. I share it because if I don’t, pretty much no one sees it due to the way Facebook distributes statuses from brand pages now. But that is really neither here nor there.

This may make me sound terrible. I know life is not all about fun. But I miss when Facebook was fun! When I went there to be a goof and find out what my friends are up to.

But now there is just so much negativity hitting me every time I scroll through my feed. And I am not talking about just news stories, because hello – I realize there is a lot of not-fun stuff going on in our world that we can’t ignore.

I’m talking about the “eat this, not that, feed your kids this, not that, homebirth, don’t homebirth, bento box lunches, Splenda will kill you, breastfeed, formula, vaccinate, vote for this, politicians are the devil, you are the devil, everyone’s an idiot STUFF.”

I am sure I’ve been guilty of some of this in the past. I know my memory is probably flawed. But boy I don’t want to do that again.

It’s exhausting. I’m doing my best. Like, for real. I am really doing my best to be a good mom and a good friend and a good human being and not shorten anyone’s life.

I guess I need to start doing my best to just not look anymore. I know I have to take the good with the bad, but man, I need a break. It’s just exhausting.

AND SO MUCH PRESSURE.

I really don’t need anymore pressure because Jenny, Party of One pretty much has that handled.