Me and My Weekend

We spent Friday night at my sister’s.  I always say that if I had three times as much money and ten times as much personal style and I didn’t have children running my house, I’d have a house just like hers.  Everything is carefully chosen and beautiful.  But I have to say, we did provide her with one of her favorite decor items, and I thought that it might be one worth sharing as we head into Mother’s Day season.

It’s the vase.  Isn’t it cute?  The girls made it for her birthday a couple of years ago.  I believe that this was our single most successful crafty-kid gift ever.  You take a plain glass vase.  If you have a husband like mine, you might even have a few hanging  around from when you received flowers in them (isn’t he dreamy?), but you can also find them at dollar stores or event the floral department at the grocery for cheap, cheap, cheap.  Then you do a little découpage action:  just tear up tissue paper into smallish pieces, and maybe add some cut-out drawings or photos.  Then you put it all in front of your kids with a pile of Elmer’s and let them have at it.  What I like about this project is that so many projects I see in magazines look really gorgeous when the style editors put them together, but when actual children do it–not so pretty.  But this requires no skill, and you can mostly use stuff you have around the house, anyway.  And you don’t really have to help the kids:  just tell them to keep covering until they can’t see through it anywhere.

You may recall that we were racing back Upstate  so that we could make it to see Bill Cosby.  I had carefully planned that we would leave by 3 pm so that we could get home by 6 pm, unpack the car, and run as soon as the babysitter arrived at 6:30 pm so that we could hopefully pick up at least a snack before our 7 pm date with Bill.

We did an excellent job with leaving on time, which was good, because apparently I’d told the babysitter 6 pm. So, if you can believe this, we drove in from our 3-hour car ride at 5:55 pm to see said babysitter standing on our porch ringing the doorbell.  Phew!  Glad we made it!  Don’t want to irritate the babysitter!   It’s difficult to find someone we can all agree on.  We’ve had two different babysitters download programs onto our computer without even asking if they could use the computer.  We had a lovely, delightful high schooler who apparently spent a great deal of time on the phone.  And the most tragic, our sweet and helpful neighbor who was a teensy bit young when we first tried:  M ended up sobbing and told me, “I like her as a friend, but not as a babysitter!”  Apparently she was uncertain her friend could handle a major crisis.  Possible, I thought, but then I knew that any major crisis would bring her parents running up the street.  Whatever.  The girls are ridiculously fussy.  And it’s just so much more pleasant to leave when they’re happy instead of crying.    So when they’re happy with a babysitter, I don’t want to leave the babysitter stranded on the doorstep.  All I can say is, it’s a good thing that nobody had to pee on that trip.

Bill Cosby was funny. (Well, duh, you say.) There were definitely a ton of very old people in the audience, but you know the problem:  Bill is pretty old.  We laughed and laughed, though.  After the show we  hit  Bangkok Bistro for some snack food.  I’ve always like Bangkok Bistro, and the girls love to eat there, too.  I mean, as far as they’re concerned, you can’t possibly beat chicken on a stick.  But it was never super-pretty–particularly the entrance.  I swear, you’d walk in and your feet would stick to the disgusting, disgusting carpet.  In fact, we were discussing it earlier in the evening, if perhaps they would upgrade now that there’s so much activity in downtown Schenectady.  So, imagine our delight when, as we sat at the bar, we looked over and realized that there are new, stylish, and easily washable tiles in the entry foyer!  Hooray!  Even better:  there was a flyer saying that all appetizers at the bar are half price from 9 pm-12 am on Fridays and Saturdays. Woo, hoo!  We had two appetizers and W had a soda and our bill was $8.  Excellent.  So next time you hit the early movie for date night and you think, gosh, we should have spent some time talking to each other instead of looking at a giant screen, you can trot on over there.

As you can see, I’m way behind, but I fully intend to get the week’s activities out there soon.  Or, you know, soon-ish.