Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Party Mama, gone beserk....

Things are fine here in rainyland. It seems as if it has been raining for weeks - despite the odd few moments of sunshine, it still seems cool and un-summerlike here. In some ways, I am fine with that - it means that I am able to accomplish some things indoors .....accent on "some"....

I have been spending time solving problems for my mother and running errands for her. So far she is able to walk (using a walker) to get to most of her activities (except golfing and lawnbowling). We have an excellent community care nurse, who is helping us solve problems and keep my mother safe and comfortable. I applied for a disabled parking tag for when I am transporting my mother - and this has made it easier to get her in and out of the car and to get the wheelchair in and out of the car for her.

But - the main thing that has happened, is that I have turned into a Party Mama. I feel sorry for my children - when they get married (I am looking at you first-born child) I know I will be intolerably over-stimulated and involved. I will make everyone crazy. I can see the future.....

I blame most of it on my best friend Martha (Martha Stewart). When I checked her website for party ideas, I can see that I am about 50 crafts away from a perfect 90th birthday party for my mother. And hell, add the crafts to organizing the party, scanning photos, making a party video and I it is clear I am party-obsessed.

My friend Leslie designed the invitations - I will post it here so you can see how talented she is. The mint party favours (thanks, Martha) are slowly being created. In order not to get carpal tunnel before I make the other 50 various party crafts recommended by Martha, I try and cut only a few party favours every evening. My older meaner sister forbade me to get a photo booth for the party - I must admit I was sorely tempted. There is no limit to how beserk I have become.....

Here is the story of my newest Martha party (obsessed) craft..... On Easter weekend, a tree fell on our house - taking out a wooden fence as well as creating other lovely messes everywhere. A piece of 4x4 fence post was one of the victims. And....Martha just called out to me..... I can hear hear her to this day "use the wood to make wooden photo cubes"..... Easy and charming, right?

Luckily my friend Jackie's husband has a saw and most importantly, saw knowledge.....and he took the post home and made me 13 cubes.... Jackie, obviously a craft-enabler and worried about my sanity, primed the cubes......you can see the cubes here waiting for Marthinspiration....


I thought that I would make each cube the same - with 6 photos of my mother. Six photos that define and illustrate her life. See how difficult this all is? It is a monumental task - one that I took seriously. Try it..... 6 photos.....

OK - so eventually the photos were selected - but now.....this is where it got difficult. Each photo had to be the right size for the cube and I decided that each photo should be in black and white. Hmmmm.... there was only one solution - no way I could figure out how to do this task......so I did what every self-respecting old person would do - I asked a kid to do it. Thanks to the wonder of the internet, I sent the photos to my first-born in Vietnam, and within about 4 minutes, she sent them back perfectly sized and ready to go.

Next - off to Kinko's to get photo-copies and off to the art store to get the gel transfer medium.

This is Martha's way (known as attempt #1)


Her suggested method takes the image off the paper and pastes it onto the cube. It reverses the photo. You can see the image is cloudy and it was very time consuming to remove the paper from the image. I tried modifying the technique, made lots of failed efforts......

This is Krista's way (known as attempt #7) **


Attempt #7 is what I refer to as "GE" - good enough. I simply used the gel medium to glue the photo onto the cube and the applied the medium on top to seal the photo. Once I figured out the best way, I cajoled Miguel into helping me trim all the photos and I started glue-ing.... and glue-ing..... See all the things I can do when it is raining outside? There will be cubes for tables at my mother's party - and after the party I will give a cube to everyone in the family as a keepsake.

Now.....I only need to get to Martha's 49 other suggestion party crafts.....

* this is the only photo of both my parents with their three kids - yep, true
** this is a photo of my mother's three grandchildren taken a few year ago (her most prized treasures) The older kids are mine....

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You are inspiring !!!

I read your blog all the time. I love it! CherieMek