I suppose quarantine during COViD-19 isn’t a bad time to start blogging about my personal life (so far, I’ve only shared amazing client work)! I’ve been wondering how to start in, and so I pop the proverbial champagne with this first post in the category to announce a very special occasion! As you may have seen on social media, my second born son Enoch turned ONE YEAR OLD THIS MONTH! Happy Birthday! He was the best Mother’s Day gift of 2019. (And he was featured in my original business headshots in the womb!) Seriously. A daytime, 2.5-hour-long home birth with no complications and altogether he made us cry for joy. Enoch is such a peaceful baby and even though a bunch of friends could not join us I wanted add festive flair in SOME way… so I thought of two!

Making A Plan

Although I love birthday parties, the quarantine threw down quite the gauntlet: how do you throw a party to which no one can be invited but your own household, without going to the store for the items, and without spending anything? The solution: make it fun and use what you’ve got! I took time to make two things: homemade confetti & a homemade piñata (the latter taking multiple days and the former requiring a mere 1 minute).

Confetti is just shredded paper. I laugh now because I actually pull out my scissors along with the colored construction paper to hand cut the confetti. Please. Ain’t nobody got time for that! I started in on my first 12 pieces of confetti when I had an epiphany. A friend had given us a tiny paper shredding machine that mostly sits lonely underneath my husband’s office desk. LET’S GO! Now I know what the phrase, “UNLIMITED POWER!” truly means. The ability to create a custom color palette of confetti! (as long as you have the paper colors you like!). After just 7 sheets of paper, I had a mountain of confetti! My recipe: white, blue, light blue, and yellow paper. In the photos I like best, Levi is hand tossing the confetti down on Enoch (in some of the photos I have Levi shooting on the tripod and I’m tossing! Just shows you what a 3 1/2 year old can do!)

A Homemade Piñata

Now for the piñata: it’s all paper maché! You just need a balloon, air in your lungs, newspaper cut into strips, and the flour mixture. My mixture: 1 cup of flour, 1 cup of water, many shakes from a salt shaker (to inhibit mold). Mix it up, slather it on your newspaper strips, then lay the strips on the balloon until it’s covered! I did two layers, and it took a day to dry between. (As I said, more work required). Homemade piñatas are a blast to spice up any party – and you can make them as intricate or as simple as you like! We added in simple treats as well as extra confetti to make the opening blast epic.

Happy birthday, sweet Enoch! As your uncle would say, congratulations on your first revolution around the sun!