I nearly forgot to write my Saturday sacrifice to the gods
of cyberspace because all week I’ve been burning up the internet shopping for birthday
décor for a party that isn’t going to happen for two and a half months. I’m so
one tracked when I’ve got a bee in my bonnet like that. I should be working on
my income taxes or cleaning the insides of my kitchen cabinets which I usually do this
time of the year. I’ve got a whole house full of similar projects I could be
doing but, no, instead I’m driving myself crazy looking at Alice in Wonderland
theme napkins, drink me bottles, keys, pocket watches, pink flamingos, tea
party menus and other things that have nothing to do with the age of the guest of
honor. And who would that be, you ask? Me. I’m throwing myself a party. An
English Afternoon Tea Party with finger sandwiches and eatable gemstones---rubies, sapphires and diamonds, oh my! Well, unless I change my mind which I’ve been doing all week.
I’ve probably driven my best friend since kindergarten crazy
right along with me with e-mails flying back and forth. N.B. is my
go-to person when it comes to questions about cooking and entertaining. She’s
spent most of her adult life creating fabulous menus for parties and get-togethers
out in suburbs of Washington, D.C. She creates
and cooks. I buy and warm up. She loves entertaining. I fall apart at the very
thought. She owns lots of china and linens in different patterns and colors. Back two years ago I decided to downsize my large collection
of Buffalo 1940s diner dishes that I used every day and instead I completed my
mom’s set of lily-of-valley dishes by Primrose China to make up place settings
for six plus a few serving dishes. The internet is great. It only took me a two
month of shopping e-Bay and the China Replacement LTD and more money than I
care to admit to find what my mom probably got free with her groceries. It
seems fair since my brother and I were probably responsible for breaking more
than our share of her favorite dishes back when we were kids.
I got off track here. Back to the party. This week I’ve been
to Hobby Lobby twice. Once to buy and once to return the table décor. In
between I discovered that my one and only table cloth isn’t big enough when I put the
extensions in the table so the color scheme I was going to use had to leave town before dark.
Can you tell I don’t entertain enough to even know a basic fact like that? That
wouldn’t happened to N.B. and I panicked over the discovery. She
had a great work-around solution only by the time I read her e-mail I had
combed the World Wide Web and found a set of six placemats that will go with my
mom’s dishes and my vintage moss green Fenton thumbprint stemware. Yes, the
party will be small---my Gathering Girls friends---and I’m not sure what I’m
going to do for a seventh place setting but I’ll come up with something for the
birthday girl.
What I’m most proud of finding on the web are little glass
bottles with corks and tags that read, “Drink Me!” Do you think women in their
70s and 80s---my guests---will remember that Alice drank a potion from a bottle
to shrink her size so she’d fit through the door to the magic garden? I’m
thinking of buying the “Eat Me!” tags too to put on cherry tarts like Alice ate
but I think we all know that eating sweets makes us grow bigger. I may have to
read Lewis Carroll’s book again in case someone quizzes me on how some of
the Alice in Wonderland things fit into the story, include pink flamingos,
pocket watches and Victorian keys.
At Hobby Lobby they had an entire featured display of
flamingo stuff---from pillows to signs to salt and pepper shakers to glasses
and dishes. They grew on me as I walked around and around the display. They made me smile and reminded me
of vacations with warm weather and blue skies. If the dollar store has some
flamingo yard ornaments this spring I might buy one to put by my front door for
the party and make a sign saying, "Go this way!" But I'm not sure how
many adults will remember the book well enough to know about those signs and
flamingos.
In my travels around the internet this week I found an
article at Smithsonian.com titled, The
Tacky History of the Pink Flamingo. I wasn’t really surprised to learn they’ve
been around since 1957. Talk about staying power! They were first created in
Massachusetts, of all places, by an art school sculptor who’d been hired by a local
plastics company and the rest is history, a history that early-on included Andy
Warhol helping to make the fake birds become a cultural pop-icon. And that’s
your retro-cool aficionado lesson for today. Oh, no! Should I/could I change my
party theme---again---this time to Flamingo City? This week should go down in The Big Book of Wasted Time as a classic example of a widow with too much time on her hands. ©
