Mother's Day Godsend

There is one day out of the year that my house becomes a picture of order, beauty, and cleanliness:

That day is Mother's Day.

I deep-clean the kitchen, and the piles of clutter on the islands at the entrances to my dining room (and on the table) are air-lifted to another room.

I also clean up the living room and the play room.

I usually bake two bundt cakes for the event - usually a chocolate cake (because Daniel likes chocolate cake), and "something else" (because I don't).

Here's one I made for a previous occasion.

This year, I thought I was doing well to do all of the floors on Thursday, and doing a round of decluttering. I decided that baking one of these cakes on Friday during the day (while I was at home with Pitter Patter by myself) wasn't going to be worth the trouble it would cause, and it wasn't possible to do it Friday night because we had company.

I made a list, because when we host a major event, Daniel invariably asks me numerous times during the day, "what do you need me to do next?" This way, I can say something to the effect of "pick something off the list." By necessity, this list becomes hyper-detailed, so he can pick one task that takes "exactly the time he has before Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood ends". I may make a standard list so I can just print it off next year.


Saturday morning, I realized that not baking on Friday was an error in judgement, as Daniel and I were running around the house taking care of one thing after another.

I began to realize that there was just no way that I was going to get the house clean and orderly and beautiful AND lay aside a total of two hours (in 20-minute intervals) to bake and decorate beautiful cakes (and they usually are beautiful) before the party.

My rescue came from Carl, one of my fathers-in-law, when we called to ask if he could bring folding chairs, because we realized that we weren't going to have enough. (I have two fathers-in-law, and also two mothers-in-law. Daniel's parents divorced when he was young. Carl is Daniel's step-dad.)

Carl offered - completely unprompted - to get some ice cream cakes as a Mother's Day gift to me, so I wouldn't need to bake. (Daniel swears he didn't say a word to instigate this offer! Carl is just awesome!)

Unfortunately, the only picture I got of Carl today was blurry.

Here are a couple of better pictures from another occasion

on which Carl turned up, just to be awesome.

(We were about to leave the splash pad when my car inexplicably refused to start.)

Anyway, about the cake:

Talk about a load off of my mind!

This left me with a much greater degree of freedom to put more of my thought into making pretty flower arrangements for some of the horizontal surfaces and tables...

I think I like the one on the left better.

Partly because creating it meant that I got to drink

several glasses of delicious port wine over the last few weeks.

Port is yummy.

...time to browse Walmart for a couple of decorative reed defusers for the bathrooms (which we kind of needed)...

Happy Mother's Day to me!

...and with some time to make aesthetic decisions about how and where to put up the decorations from Pitter Patter's birthday last year. I didn't manage to get a really good picture. I might include one I take this week in my quick takes on Friday.

Needless to say, I was thrilled.

A good time was had by all, even me! I was definitely not stressed like I would have been if he hadn't volunteered to bring dessert for the party.