Welp!
This isn’t the announcement I thought I’d be making next with my blog, but I guess it was going to come up sometime.
My best friend sent me a text earlier in the week letting me know she was throwing her youngest a 4th birthday party on Saturday, so if I wanted to pop over, I could. I told her I’d be there and let both my mom and boyfriend know that I was going and if they wanted to come, they could join me.
She told me her little girl loved makeup, mermaids, Barbie, nail polish, squishies, etc. Basically, what most 4-year-old girls do. I found THE cutest clear vinyl Barbie backpack with a whole makeup and nail kit for ages 3+ and immediately ordered it from the magic A—>Z app. When it arrived in the mail, I realized I needed both a gift bag and a card, so on Saturday morning, I waltzed over to the Walgreens across the street in search of a mermaid bag and a mermaid card.
The closest I got was a blue, multicolored polka-dotted bag that was just a little too big. Disappointingly, there were NO mermaid cards. There was one cartoony pegasus card, but honestly, I guarantee one of the children present at this party would have been like “WHY DOES THE UNICORN HAVE NO HORN?” despite it clearly being a pegasus. I ended up leaving with that polka-dotted bag, a $20 Tamagotchi to mail to a friend for nostalgia sake, and a syringe for resin casting in small molds.
I situated the gift in the bag with a few too many sheets of tissue paper and started rifling through my paper drawer. I pulled out a sheet of textured cardstock with a neat score right in the center and a matching envelope. I started looking to see what paper scraps I had that would make a great mermaid card. I ended up walking back to my desk with a piece of black glitter fabric, a pack of gold doilies, a few pastel sheets of construction paper, thick vellum, a scrap of some die-cut paper pattern, a sheet of silver paper, and the cardstock with matching envelope. I also managed to grab a baby jar of years-old rubber cement.
I sat and sketched a cute little mer-girl who was supposed to be the birthday girl. I decided I would use my Japanese watercolor brush pens to color her in, but I would basically collage this together. I used the design vellum as an expensive piece of tracing paper and traced the shapes out for her hair, shell bra and tail. The black glitter fabric was used for her hair, the silver for her tail and a small piece of a gold doily as a crown.
I originally thought I could cut scales out by hand, but decided that would be too extra, so I went back to my drawers, and pulled out three jars of embossing powder and my heat gun. At my desk I found my embossing pen and a micron (05 if you must know) and decided to emboss the tail with color.
Alas, I had a finished mermaid card.
There was this dark spot on her face that bled up from her neck that for some reason I didn’t try to diffuse with my water brush. She also has a very uneven tan. The thin lines in her tail didn’t come out so thin as the embossing powder spread as it melted under the air of the heat gun, and as goofy as the whole thing looked, this card would soon mean a lot more than just fulfilling an errand of sending a message of best wishes and fun to the little girl on the eve of her actual birthday.
My boyfriend arrived after my mom and we all piled into the car to drive less than five minutes across town to my BFF’s house. We let ourselves in through their beautiful hand-built fence, said our hellos to my best friend’s father and brother-in-law before going into the house, single-file.
Hugs were given by all to each other and the gift was seated in with the others. Our other best friend was there, which was a relief for me because I wondered if she was coming.
I ate half the vegetables on the veggie platter as I recently went through a diet change and vegetables are seemingly the only thing I was able to eat there. I flapped my gums with my best friend’s mom, my best friend’s husband’s mom, their sisters and even the children, telling one of them, “Hey, nice beard.” (OK, so he’s like 19 or whatever, but still! I can’t get over the fact he’s now 19, has a girlfriend, AND a beard!)
At one point, I looked over at my mom who was suddenly holding a small, black Pomeranian who got real comfortable and just melted in her lap. The next thing I know, my mom was sleeping in the chair as only an old man would, head tilted back against the wall, mouth agape. I woke her and asked if she wanted to go home. She said she did, as she worked a long day and needed sleep. I was about to let everyone know I was going to step out to take her home, but my boyfriend piped up, “I’ll take her home and come back. You stay here.” So I did, thinking nothing of it.
He came back alone and eventually everyone left, leaving my best friend and her husband (the hosts), their oldest daughter (the birthday girl was passed out in her older sister’s room—way too much birthday fun), our other best friend, my boyfriend and me.
And then it happened.
The outfit I wore to the party that looked …OK-ish
My boyfriend announces, “Well, your two best friends are here, so…” and he quickly produces a small blue, TIffany wannabe box. He fumbled with the lid for a second and pulled out a ring box. He flips it open and says, “So, you wanna marry me?” Both my best friends are recording and I have no idea what’s happening. I’m confused and skeptical, but inside of that box is a ring like I’ve never seen before. I respond with, “what?”
“Do you wanna marry me? I choose you—do you choose me?”
“Are you serious?”
“No, I’m not serious. I’m joking.”
“What is that? Also, you chose to do this when I’m looking like THIS?”
“You’re going to look like that for the rest of your life, so yes.”
I’m also a little concerned that he’s proposing to me at someone’s birthday party. We always talked about how tacky it would be to steal someone else’s thunder for a gain.
I mean, OK. It was a 4-year-old’s party that everyone had already gone home from, and the birthday girl was too drunk on fun to even stay awake to enjoy this moment with us.
He slides the ring onto my finger. I throw my hands up and go, “Yeah, I guess I’ll marry you.” We hug and kiss and there’s laughing and clapping and then I realized I was being recorded. (And no, you can’t see the video—I’m too fat and ugly to share here.) I immediately ask the two ladies, “Wait…did you know about this?”
Turns out, after I told him BFF 1 was throwing a party for her daughter, he called her and told her he’s been walking around with a ring and he didn’t know how to propose. So he asked if he could do it after the party since he assumed both BFFs would be present. BFF 1 said absolutely, so he asked BFF 1 to call BFF 2. BFF 1 calls BFF 2 while she’s at work, thus causing undue panic, but after it’s explained why she’s phoning, all is well and BFF 2 makes a valiant effort to be there for the party and the moment.
And here we are.
Can I also note, my nails were not done? Plus, my hair was dyed black-blue a couple weeks prior, so I was still suffering from the effects of having literally everything I own, including my fingernails, be stained blue. It was NOT a cute look. The next day, I gave myself a fresh set of acrylics (that eventually turned blue, too) and had a mini photoshoot of my adorned hand while at the park.
So while I was hoping my next big blog post was going to be announcing I got a new job I was excited to start, it’s instead a story of how I went to a mermaid themed birthday party with a mermaid card I made and left with the man I’m going to marry.
Insane!