Christmas in October and J’s Sleepover

Grandma & Grandpa arrived from Kansas City for a weekend visit today. Mostly, they wanted to deliver a birthday present for me. Ta da!

It’s a cabinet that matches our other dining room furniture, and it replaces this nasty cart that I used to cover with a tablecloth so that no one would have to view its hideousness. Also, it was difficult to navigate between our dining table and the cart because our house is so cozy, yet leaving the corner empty looked weird. So, hooray! Grandpa made it himself (remember, he’s the handy fort-building guy?) And, in case you are wondering, Cute W has no unmarried siblings that will allow you to join the family. Sorry.

It felt quite a bit like Christmas in October. They also brought along a big basket of apples grown in their own yard

and a brand-new Kitchen-Aid Mixer that my sister-in-law never uses because cooking’s not her cup of tea. We already had the same mixer, but years ago we accidentally ran it when the bowl wasn’t inserted properly, and it’s been just slightly messed up ever since. It worked well enough that it wasn’t worth buying a new one, but a brand-new one is super-awesome.

Tonight is J’s sleepover–just four little girls are invited, but I’m still a bit nervous because they’re so young (second grade). They’re going to have pizza and pasta, then cupcakes and ice cream, and we have roughly 2 gajillion Perler Beads to craft themselves silly. Then they’re watching The Muppet Movie. But J got most excited about the idea of a snack bar. Because I mentioned serving popcorn during the movie, and that started morphing into a whole Snack Bar concept. So they made a sign

and started on signs.

Meanwhile, I was inspired by their enthusiasm and decided to make it a little bit more realistic. I got some popcorn boxes and then stumbled on Hefty Zoo Pals cups with lids and straws. Throw in some Halloween candy and voilà!

A realistic-looking snack for movie watching! Of course every concession stand needs good help, and luckily, so J hired M. It’s a great way to get her involved without treating her like a little kid.

3 Comments

  1. Claire

    That is a gorgeous cabinet!

    Katie: is something going on with your website? I haven’t been getting your posts in my husband’s Facebook feed, and I didn’t get an email notification of your follow-up to my comment the other day.

  2. @Claire, yes, isn’t it pretty? Re: the website, my posts won’t necessarily show up in a Facebook feed b/c it’s really up to FB what they decide to include, and they base it on some sort of complicated algorithm of your activity to figure out what you’re most interested in seeing. So the way to increase the likelihood that it will show up in your feed is to occasionally visit my page directly or to “like” or comment on my posts when they DO show up in your FB feed. Then the little monkeys working the cranks inside the Facebook machine say, “Oh, this user is interested in this, we should show it more often.” As for email notification of follow-up to comments directly on the blog, I just don’t have that. I’d have to decide on and install a plug-in to make that an option. Although someone else has said that they’d like that, so maybe I should look into it. . . .

  3. Claire

    Thanks for clarifying about the FB thing. The funny thing about the comments is that the past few times I’ve posted a comment, it has had a box that I can check if I wanted email notifications for follow-up comments. So I checked the box each time, but it didn’t work. This time it doesn’t look like the box is there. Hmm. Technology always stumps me.

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