A Whimsical Birthday

Today is Miss Whimsy’s 18th birthday. Where did the time go?

I started the celebration by croaking out the Happy Birthday song and delivering French vanilla coffee to her in bed. She was her usual morning grump for the first few minutes. Yep. Nothing much has changed since that morning 18 short years ago. Even then, she was a bit of a pain and made the grand entrance at glacial speed. I don’t sweat it. She eventually descends from the Turret Room on time and cheerful.

Who wouldn’t be cheerful at 18?

We won’t have the official family celebration until next week when the college girls come home for Easter, but the birthday girl doesn’t mind. She’ll get to spend this auspicious evening with friends.

Growing up, she didn’t have a “friend party” every year. When our girls began arriving, my sister and I agreed that we would celebrate family- style for most of their birthdays and help each other throw festive friend occasions every few years.

The sister was (and still is) my faithful partner in crime, the perpetual Ethel to my Lucy. Someday I’ll yak all about her. Ethel and I loved to put together theme parties. We make a pretty good team. I concoct a notion, and she figures out a way to bring it to fruition…under budget. We repeated each theme party four times for our collective princesses. By the time Miss Whimsy came along, we had reached the near pinnacle of penny pinching party perfection.

Not surprisingly, their first theme was the fairy princess party. We made little purple capes for each princess to wear over their dresses and crafted jeweled tiaras to go along with them. Now, those were the pre Hobby Lobby days when crafting wasn’t nearly as easy or fabulous as it is today. Grandpa made magic wands, all glittered up for the occasion.

We pilfered appliance stores for boxes, which we faux bricked to transform our porches into fairy castle walls. They ate pink food and sipped pink punch, and we played “Pin the Crown on the Princess” on a huge painted display that I had made at school using the trusty old opaque projector. We hunted in the lawn for little silver crowns ... which we made… by cutting, shaping, painting, and glittering dozens of empty dooters.

A “dooter” is familyspeak for empty toilet tissue and paper towel holders… so named for the “doot doot doot DOOOOOT” sound that Lucy and Ethel make when they blow them like a bugle. The Dooter is a multi- purpose do more of the highest degree, second only to the empty coffee can.

Lucy and Ethel hosted other parties too, but I’ll have to leave them for another time.

Because today, I’m focusing on the big 1-8, and I still have some things to do.

The birthday girl had to start this one with her breakfast on the go. She got her favorite chocolate muffins. Now, normally, I wouldn’t get mommy points for sending her off to school all sugared up, but this is her birthday. Therefore, I get a pass. She gets strawberries too because those are her favorites. And we pinked up the basket. Pink remains the official birthday color in Princess Land.

Super Dad headed out early this morning to put some of these along the 30 country mile commute.

 It won’t really be a surprise since we’ve done it before, but it’s our own silly version of a Burma Shave Birthday.

We recently added this simplification courtesy of The Duchess.

These weighted little sign holders were made out of (what else?) empty cans, PVC, and Quik Crete. Perfect for those places where a lawn sign is too stubborn to stand.

Wish we had thought of that many yard signs ago. 

Kids and birthdays. Just another favorite way of making memories. What are yours?