thankful#43: craft parties with friends

kinsley has been very in to doing artsy projects lately, which i am sure comes from all of the fun things she's doing at school. we decided to have a little craft party with some of her friends, and i must say i've been looking forward to it ever since we sent the evite. i went a little crazy at Michael's last week (i could do some serious damage at that place and their dang coupons and sales make it even easier).

we ended up having six women and ten kids in our tiny apartment. it was tight. it was chaotic. it was super messy. but it was really fun. i had envisioned taking a bunch of pictures of the whole process. you know, kids all nicely at their little spots at the tables, ornament decorations neatly organized and easily accessible to the little hands politely reaching for them, moms sipping hot peppermint cocoa and adoringly looking on at their sweet angel children creating magical holiday decorations. turns out it's pretty difficult to get ten kids under five years old to convene around two tiny eating-turned-craft tables when there's toys to play with and dress-up clothes and a kitchen to pretend with. it's also not easy to keep any organization what-so-ever to supplies, especially when said supplies include things like stickers of all colors, sizes, shapes and sparkle, glue sticks, glitter, shiny pipe cleaners, and embelishments in tiny jars. i had also not given much thought to the fact that two of our lovely children are still at the age of putting anything and everything into their mouths (even though my darling dagny does it while looking straight at me with her eyebrows raised like, "i know you're going to try to take this from me so i'm going to take it and run in 3 ... 2... "). oh, and i forgot the hot cocoa all together. some hostest.

maebel was so focused

a tiny glimpse of the chaos, but most of the kids had already moved on to other toys at this point

i didn't manage to get more than a couple of pictures the whol afternoon, and they are very sub-par at most. but the kids seemed to enjoy themselves and they made some pretty cute little decorations.

and it was so nice to have an opportunity to hang out with some great ladies.