How To Drive Yourself And Your Loved Ones Insane In Ten Days Or Less

I'm a little neurotic this week.

I mean, more-so than I usually am.

Mr. C's birthday party is looming on Sunday, and I'm stressing over the myriad of self-imposed and completely-unnecessary tasks I must perform by then.

As you'll recall, I decided to do a 'knight' party.  Luckily, I enslaved my sister and mom on a recent family visit and got them to help me cut out felt 'tunics', string together 'jewels' (for prizes/medallions), and decorate 'knight' cookies:

Yes, that's a knight!  NOT a fencing-dude!

So that stuff is done.

Now I've been working on the castle.  As a reminder, here's the castle I was inspired to copy:

Cute Castle!

 Aaaaaaaaaand, here's mine:

Ghetto Castle!

But I still HAVE to (have to) finish building it, plus create a dining pavilion, and figure out how to set up the games the kids will play.  And, although I've baked the cake, I still HAVE to (have to) piece it together and decorate it like a dragon and get it ready for the dry ice smoke-breathing effect I HAVE to (have to) do for it.

Which is all manageable, except . . .

Bee's two brothers and two nephews decided last week to come for a visit.  They arrived today.  I'm so happy to see them, but their impending arrival meant I HAD to (had to) also fit in some major house-cleaning and room-reorganizing and crap-hiding in order to accommodate them all.  This included FINALLY finishing the bathroom update.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

I'm so glad to finally have that part finished.  Unfortunately, I'm on edge from being forced to take time out of obsessing over Mr. C's party to instead obsess over making our dank basement more guest-friendly. 

Also, I was thwarted in my 24/7 Epic Knight Party Obsessing because I was just hired to make TWO super-awesome baby shower cakes:

Twins!

Which was also a good thing, but exhausting.

Luckily, those babycakes are done and our house has received our guests, so I am free to go back to devoting all my energy to Mr. C's party.

The one for four-year-olds.

Who would be perfectly happy with a bunch of water pistols and a cake.

But that's not good enough for me; oh NO!  I must once-again walk that fine line between a party being genius and a party being obnoxious!  I must push and push to follow a theme to death so the other mothers will think I'm awesome, then I must stress that the other mothers will instead think I'm a pretentious show-off.

I must go dumpster-diving for old wood, cut 'shields' for the kids to decorate . . .

. . . and paint the other side with chalkboard paint so our guests will have a cool little take-home chalkboard gift.

I figure all that effort is worth it, since I'm trying so hard just to have a few quality items at the party, and not fill goody-bags with a bunch of cheap crap.  Of course, my search for 'quality' often falls short, and I also end up spending whopping amounts of time instead of little amounts of money, but . . . still . . .

Bee is pretty sick of me right now.  He's told me he's "not sure he's comfortable" having a wife who gets so insane about these parties.

I wasn't sure how to properly respond:

a)  "Yeah, you're right; I should seek professional help."
b)  "But this is my one opportunity a year to make the other mothers fear me; please don't take that away from me!"
c)  "What do you care how much effort I put into these parties?  I'm not asking YOU to do anything!"
d)  "Fuck you."

No, I won't tell you how I answered.