Parties give me anxiety. First I worry that no one will come and I’ll feel bad, and then I worry that someone won’t be invited and they will feel bad. Parties (and socializing in general) are a breeding ground for insecurity. But I want my children to be relatively normal with somewhat normal childhoods, and I want our home to be the house that teenagers don’t mind hanging out at (eventually).
So a couple weeks ago, Tara sent me a link about a PR promotion for Creativity for Kids, which makes craft kits for kids. I assume they do “boy” stuff too, but we got two huge boxes full of everything you could want to make bracelets, headbands, necklaces, purses, and mosaic trinket boxes. (Not that boys can’t glue opaque plastic tiles to cardboard butterfly boxes, but.)
We invited the little girls from our street (geographical discrimination seeming to be the least indefensible) over for a couple hours on Saturday and got busy cutting up watermelon and setting out rainbow fish crackers. I even decorated!
They were pretty serious about crafting.
At the party we simply opened the kits and dug in. I heard a lot of “I get to keep this, too?” and “This is the best party ever!” I’m sure our hospitality was stellar, but really, throwing a party with shiny take-homes of such inalienable appeal to little girls was like {nonviolent version of “shooting fish in a barrel”}.
Lucy takes after Tom in the smiling-for-pictures department.
While the kits were pitch-perfect for my girls and their friends, I did feel like at times that they required assembly rather than creativity, if that makes any sense. My kids begged to play with large cardboard boxes the supplies came in, for example, but really if you’re going to get craft kits in the first place, these are great ones to get. And if you have party anxiety to begin with, or if you’re low on the raw materials of conspicuous glitter-gluing, craft kits are the way to go.
My favorite Faber Castell product was the coloring books. Lucy especially loves to color, and the pages of each child’s book, including beautiful mandala designs, were so gorgeous compared to her usual generic princess book from the dollar store. The markers that came with them are not only washable but re-hydrate-able! (Not that I find lost marker lids in the bowels of the couch on a regular basis.)
Our party was a big success: a good time was had by all, loot of the finest order was appreciated and hoarded home, and Mom needed a tall Mountain Dew and a lie-down with The Last Detective to recover. I can heartily recommend Creativity for Kids for all your girl-craft-party needs, whether you’re fraught with social anxiety or not.
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