My coffee cup was whistling in a recent meeting and it seemed to me it was saying “I may or may not have been late to this meeting because I stopped to get a cup of coffee this morning…” so I needed the whistling to stop immediately.

If you ever have this problem, the solution is simple: use a pen and make the whole in the back of the lid bigger. No more tell-tale latte!

Whew – that weekend went fast! I can’t believe it’s Monday already… I had THREE birthday parties on Saturday. Two were for my weekend gig and one was for my very best friend in the whole world, Laura. (she comments on every post – how awesome is that?) She had a cookie decorating party because she loves to decorate cookies. I’ll post some pics soon.

One of the weekend gig parties was a pop star karaoke party for a 9 year old girl! It’s a lot of fun singing karaoke and teaching the girls my dance to “Nobody’s Perfect” by Miley Cyrus. I also painted faces (with glitter!), did the limbo, played freeze dance and played “WOULD YOU RATHER” with the kids. Oh, and I got a $40 tip… so, that was awesome.  

My problem with “WOULD YOU RATHER” used to be that I could only think of questions that were totally inappropriate for kids (“Would you rather have small boobs or big boobs?” or “would you rather freeze to death or be lit on fire?”), so I compiled a list of questions for kids and it’s one of my most favorite games to play at these parties.

Here is my list of go-to WOULD YOU RATHER questions for kids (along with some notes):

• Would you rather only be able to whisper or only be able to shout?*
• Would you rather be a giant hamster or a tiny rhino?**
• Would you rather be rich and ugly, or Poor and good looking?***
• Would you rather only eat your favorite food for the rest of your life, or never eat it again?
• Would you rather be a great big giant, or a little tiny person that can fit in my hand?
• Would you rather be hairy all over or completely bald?
• Would you rather be stranded on an island alone or with someone you hate?
• Would you rather have a beautiful house and ugly car or an ugly house and beautiful car?
• Would you rather have a freakishly huge smile or a freakishly small nose?
• Would you rather forget who you were or who everyone else was?
• Would you rather get even or get over it?
• Would you rather give bad advice or take bad advice?
• Would you rather always have to say everything on your mind or never speak again?
• Would you rather always lose or never play?

 *I like to start with this one because I can ask critical-thinking follow-up questions that really get them thinking: (Whispering) What if there was an emergency and you could only talk like this (whisper “help, help”)? (Yelling) WHAT IF YOU WANTED TO TELL A SECRET BUT YOU COULD ONLY TALK LIKE THIS?
**If they want to know exact sizes, I say the hamster is as big as a rhino and the rhino is as small as a hamster.
***Instead of rich/poor you can say smart/stupid. Some parents don’t like using the word “stupid” though.

 So… now it’s your turn: WOULD YOU RATHER BE A GIANT HAMSTER OR A TINY RHINO?

 I’d rather be a tiny rhino. No question! I think people would be waaay freaked out by a giant hamster. But a tiny rhino is cute… right?

Original source for many of the questions is here.

Coincidentally, we had brunch at Maryjane’s Coffee Shop (inside the Hard Rock Hotel in San Diego) twice this weekend. Chris and I headed downtown with Joe on Saturday to grab breakfast and ended up at Maryjane’s Coffee Shop because they had open patio seating and yummy benedicts. (PS we witnessed the most hilarious (very drunk!) couple walking down the street after getting kicked out of a nearby bar – at 1pm!) We ended up back there on Sunday because the place we were meeting friends for brunch was closed at 10am and we were already downtown. It’s definitely a yummy place for breakfast. It can be loud and expensive, but their hash brown pototoes are soooo good.

If you look closely, you can see my Cinderella hair. I had a princess party right after brunch so I did my hair before we left. My princess party went really well… and the birthday girl was waaay cute. She was celebrating her third birthday and said something SO FUNNY to me… something NO birthday girl (or boy) has ever said…

birthday girl: where did you get your headband?
me: from my fairy god mother.
bg: what is on your neck?
me: it’s a necklace from my fairy god mother.
bg: where are your boobies?
me: so… uh… what balloon animal do you want?

Where do kids get this stuff?

My six year old niece left a voicemail on my cell phone in 2005 that I saved on my phone for 4 YEARS because it was so adorable (she was 18 mos at the time) I couldn’t bring myself to delete it. Every 21 days, I would have to re-save it. And every time I wanted to listen to my saved messages, I would have to skip the adorable message… it got to be a bit of a pain. But I loved it so much… I just couldn’t delete it (you’ll love it to – listen to it here).

I knew I wanted to keep it forever, but I wasn’t sure how to do that. I considered getting a digital recorder and recording it, but I figured that wouldn’t give me the quality recording I wanted.

One day (after the number of adorable messages grew from one to six and I had to re-save SIX messages every 21 days – plus, I was really getting scared that Verizon would finally just delete them since it had been 4 YEARS) I decided that I would devote some time to solving my voicemail-saving problem. I was so pleased when I found GotVoice- and the answer to my dilemma.

It’s really easy to sign-up. You can even try it for free for 2 weeks – plenty of time to save all your precious voicemails. But, if you were as grateful I was to have .wav or .mp3 files of your memorable messages, please consider supporting them by subscribing for at least a month. After you sign up, all of your new voicemails will be emailed to you as .wav files. To download your saved voicemails, simply click on “get saved messages” under the header on the left of the welcome screen. It also captures the date of the message, which is pretty neat.

I think it’s important to mention that I’m not getting anything from GotVoice for this – I just think they’re super. If you need any help getting set up, I’ll try my best to answer any questions!

It’s also worth mentioning that there other uses for this… maybe you have some messages you need to preserve for legal purposes, or just need to document information.

I’ve got big plans for New Year’s Eve… last year, my nieces (age 4 and 5 at the time) and I filled out a time capsule questionnaire and stamped it “DO NOT OPEN UNTIL 12/31/2009″ so tonight we get to open it!

Hopefully, they’ll be excited about their answers from last year. I remember that they weren’t too excited about answering the questions (they liked tracing their hands and feet, and LOVED decorating the envelope we put everything in).

Unfortunately, I didn’t save the questionnaire but I was able to recreate it. If you’d like to use it, you can download it here!

The things I like about this questionnaire are:

• there is a line for the child to sign his or her name – it’s a neat way to track handwriting from year to year
• there’s space to trace hands and feet so you can see how much each child grew from the previous year
• the “predications” section can be really cute – my niece predicts that we will have “sparkly water” in the future

To make your own time capsule, follow these steps:

1. Decide on a container. We used envelopes since our capsule consisted of only the questionnaire and some photos. If you want to put some fun toys in there, you can use a coffee container or a box.
2. Decorate the container.
3. Print one copy of the Time Capsule Questionnaire for each child (note: there is a questionnaire for 2011 in there that you’ll leave blank, and the “instructions” are for 12/31/2010)
4. Put the completed questionnaire (for 2010), the blank questionnaire (for 2011), the instructions, and any photos or mementos in the time capsule
5. DO NOT OPEN UNTIL 12/31/2010!

Some ideas for things you can put in your time capsule:

• lots of photos (including a picture of each child in his/her favorite outfit)
• newspaper clippings
• a toy (that won’t be missed for a whole year)
• drawings

A dear friend of my mom’s hosts a gingerbread house party most years (not every year because it’s a lot of work!). He starts in OCTOBER, making gingerbread houses for his guests to decorate. Each house has candy windows and he provides a little light that goes in the house through a hole in the bottom of the house base.

He also provides tons of candy!

All the kids (and adults) carefully “glue” all the candy onto the houses with frosting (also provided by John) and turn the basic house structures John provides into their own creation. John also gave each child a stocking embroidered with his or her name and stuffed with goodies. Oh, and everyone needs to wear either a Santa hat or an Elf hat (the whole time) and everyone brings a homemade dish to share.

John would really like the tradition to continue, so maybe next year I’ll be his gingerbread house mentor.

Aren’t the lights in downtown San Diego pretty? We took Joe for a stroll late tonight and soaked it all in.

I created a little map of a typical downtown walk for Joe here:

View Joe’s Walk around Downtown San Diego in a larger map