Baby Showers! Ugh!
Baby showers are horrible. You get a bunch of clucking women together blathering on about their kids and ugh! Then there is the “How far along are you?” from every woman. The rubbing of the tummy. The expectant mother complaining that she has to pee so often and that her breasts are big and I won’t even talk about when she shows her stretch marks and asks you to rub cocoa butter on them. Worst of all is when they show you that disgusting black line…..ewwwwwww!
Anywho, I was invited to a baby shower for a friend. It’s her first little wiglet. I am not super close to her, but some of her friends called to ask me if I would be a co-hostess. I said sure! What else am I going to say? If I said no, they would tell her and she would be all hurt and the pregnancy emotions would kick in and oh that is way too much drama for me.
So they told me to figure out how I wanted to contribute. I said I could have it at my house. Oh! You think I had slapped them or something. “No, really, thank you but we’re having it at a restaurant.” I didn’t care. You know, whatever, I just thought it would be more personal than a restaurant.
So I decided to look at Martha’s stuff to see how I could contribute. I was hesitant to do any crafting because I haven’t had much luck with that lately. My fingers and elbows are still recovering from when I glued them together trying to make the string bangle and I am still paying off my credit card for that expensive bird that I needed for the photo for Martha’s handmade pet toy contest.
Hmmm. Food, no the restaurant will do that and I am a crappy cook anyway and I would never cook for 75 girls. Horrors! Oh, there it is! That’s what I want to do! A baby shower by mail! LOL!
Well, they just called. I am in charge of games!!!!!!!!! Oh that’s not the worst. They want me to run the toilet paper game? I started laughing, thinking they were kidding, but they were dead serious. OMG! And then it was even worse, they asked me for a check for $2,500 as a down payment for the shower. What? The shower is costing $5,000 each for the restaurant alone because they decided to buy lunch for everyone and drinks. Yikes!! I don’t think I can afford to be this woman’s friend.
I don’t want to just do those stupid games though. Oh, that’s it. I am going to do luminarias!!! Mood lighting for the restaurant. perfect!
Luminarias
Well, of course I waited until an hour before the shower to make these freaking luinimarias, but I refuse to be remembered as the one who did the toilet paper game at this shower! They will remember my 200 Luminarias forever because I’m lighting up that room like a stadium at night. The mommy to be will have to wear shades!!!
I better hurry! I haven’t done my hair and only one leg is shaved. OK, I have the 200 paper lunch bags, although they are not real light. They are supposed to be light. Whatever. I went to 5 stores and there are no light lunch bags. I have the ruler, no scalloped rotary cutter, gold doilies but I only have white because I couldn’t find gold doilies this morning, scissors, glue stick, well I have Elmer’s and crazy glue, votives and a lighter. Ok. I’m good.
Lay the bags flat. Geez, laying out 200 lunch bags takes time! Use a ruler to cut a new top edge an inch below the bag’s original edge. I don’t have time to do that for 200 bags!
Cut doilies to fit bag by laying flat bag on surface. Doh! I get that. Lay doily on bag <snicker> and determine where to cut in a pleasing design? That isn’t much direction Martha. Then I am supposed to cut along straight lines and then curved lines and oh blah, blah, blah…. I am just going to whack away because I have 200 to do in 15 minutes.<whack, whack,whack>
Ok, now I’m using the crazy glue to attach the doilies, but I am wearing gloves this time because I still don’t have fingerprints from the last time that I used crazy glue. Wow!! That was fast, although I did glue some pieces of glove on almost all of them. Good thing I had a few hundred pairs of those gloves!
Postscript
Well, there is good news and bad. The good news is that the luminarias were a real hit. At first it was pretty dark. Now I know why Martha said to cut them down. So I just rolled them down like you roll up jeans. Well, that kind of made the doilies abstract looking, but that was ok because I saw that I didn’t really cut them very well once the candles were in them and the pieces of rubber glove blocked the light.
When I rolled them down, they were really more like 200 candles than luminarias, but I liked telling people that they were luminarias because no one really knows what that means and it sounds really important and they are too afraid to look stupid so they don’t ask what they are, but they just open their eyes and say how greta they are while they try to figure out what they are! There were so many it made it a little warm in there. We all stripped down to the bare minimum and it was bright!
The toilet paper game went ok. Until this one girl collected the toilet paper from 75 girls and stupidly put all of that toilet paper too close to the luminarias. Someone opened a window because it was a little stuffy from the heat of all those candles (our cheeks were so red we all looked like we were going to have strokes!) that the flame blew over on the luminarias and everything caught fire. At first the sprinkler system didn’t turn on, so when some of that plastic decoration stuff on the walss of the reastaurant blew, it really blew!! One girl got a piece of hot plastic in her hair and it went right through I’m telling you. She’ll need a comb over for weeks!
Anywho, for a few minutes, it sounded like the 1812 overture. Then finally the sprinklers came on and sadly, all the presents were ruined.
The total bill cost me $17,500 because they “underestimated” catering costs and the fire damage was unexpected. They sat around and did nothing and I was the one who had to do these ridiculous games like the toilet paper game.
But they will never forget my luminarias!!!! Neither will I!
That is an amazing story! I admire your pragmatic approach to the disaster that became of the luminaria’s. The irony of a fire at a shower is also not lost on me.