It’s been a couple of weeks – I just realized this post was sitting in my drafts. Better late than never, right?
For Déla’s 10th birthday, her last one where she will have a large party, she decided on two things. First was a visit to a newly opened painting studio. Then she wanted a couple of her friends to sleep over afterwards. That eventually morphed and evolved into a large slumber party with the visit to the painting studio the next day.
Girls started arriving at 6 and they all went down to the basement. And wow, was it loud.
Laura and I sat in the living room trying to stay up, but it was about 11pm when I finally went upstairs to bed. The girls were showing no sign of sleeping. Or being quiet. Laura stayed in the front room, trying to get some rest, but the girls, 8 in all, just wouldn’t sleep. Until about 5:30 in the morning. Granted, some of the girls fell asleep before that, but to say it was a long night would be an understatement.
Déla emerged about 8:30 looking a little worse for the wear. It was decided beforehand that I would fix pancakes for breakfast, and I’m glad the girls didn’t all wake up at the same time. Some started getting up at 7, others had to be woken up in order to get going to the painting studio. At least I was able to cook pancakes for a handful of people at a time, rather than everybody all at once. What was funny was how girls would emerge from the basement, watch TV, have breakfast or whatever, then go back downstairs and fall asleep again. The morning was busy with people waking up, going back to sleep, waking up, breakfast, going back to sleep, and so on. But it couldn’t stay that way.
Finally we had to get going. We were to be at Strokes paint studio at 11am. At 10:30 not everybody was up. While the paint studio is four blocks from our house, getting a number of sleep deprived girls packed up from the slumber party, out the door and down the road is a much tougher job than one might initially imagine.
Thankfully we weren’t too late and the painting began in earnest. Two friends who were not able to attend the sleepover arrived to attend the party. Somehow we had worked it out so there would also be lunch and cake at the studio, and after the painting was done, about 2pm, the parents would arrive and pick up their daughters directly at the paint studio. In hindsight, it would have been easier to just walk back to our house and have the parents pick up there rather than pack our van full of slumber party material, find a parking spot and wait for parents.
As for the painting itself, Déla picked out the picture for everybody to work on. The owner of the studio stood up in front of everybody going through step by step how to do the painting. Some girls opted to try and paint it like the model picture. Some girls varied it a bit by choosing different colors, and some just sort of followed along with a basic outline and called it good.
There was a break in the middle of the session for lunch and cake.
Yes, Déla picked it out.
While a little pricey for a birthday party, the step by step instructions were easy to follow, well, for those that chose to follow them. Three hours was enough time to get the full painting done. There was a break in the middle for about 20 minutes to eat lunch and have some cake while the background colors dried a bit before adding some of the foreground paint and details. The girls had a lot of fun and each got to take their painting home.
Returning home Déla took a nap.
After dinner it was time for us to finish off what was left of the cake for for Déla to open her presents, since it was her actual birthday.
Al in all it was a good birthday. A tiring one to be sure, but a successful one.
