Plan Your Own Parties

Why Party Planning?

I have always loved writing and have dreamed about writing a book for some time. I have tons of ideas floating around in my head but none of them seem to stick and really take flight.

One day a friend suggested I write a book about party planning. I have always loved planning parties (more on that later), and people had forever suggested that I start my own party planning business. That never felt right and I would always reply with something like, “I wouldn’t want to plan for a client because I don’t like to be told “no.” It’s especially annoying to me when someone tells me that making something magical happen is just too hard or time consuming. There’s a billboard in Texas that says if you want something to happen, tell a Texan it can’t be done. That pretty much sums up my feelings about life. Anything can happen. Anything. I’m dead serious.

Anyhoo, back to the why. I started thinking about writing a book about planning your own parties, and actually started writing it. While in the thick of it, another friend suggested that I write a blog. Way back when people started writing blogs, I must admit that I thought the whole thing was a bit narcissistic. But, as a true fan of the time suck, also known as facebook , I have fallen in love with following long lost friends and their daily activities. In such a fast paced world, I love being able to keep up with what's going on with my people- and I especially love being able to do it in my pajamas. So, that's why I decided to start a blog.

But why party planning? The KISS answer is, "because it ROCKS!" The longer version is wound around my mom and my childhood. I had a somewhat disconnected one (didn't we all), and my family life was rocky to say the least. My happiest memories are of special occasions, not the occasions themselves, but the actual planning of them- the delicious anticipation of the culminating event. My single mom was uber busy, but when we were party planning I had her full attention. We would sit and plan and the world was right.

When I started my own family, I of course wanted to make every holiday and every birthday perfect. Which always led to lots of tension in our house- the storm before the calm- and one day my husband pointed out how stressed I got before we had parties. Well, I wasn't going to give up my parties. And since I am a timeline and to do list follower, I made my own party planning timeline, which was based upon flylady's mantra: "You can do anything for 15 minutes." So true, so true. So now I blissfully plan my way to a party extravaganza...15 minutes at a time. And you can too!