Recycled Decor

The last week I've taken a bit of a break from the book projects to concentrate on designing and creating the decor for my local MOPs group meetings. MOPs is short for Mothers of Preschoolers- preschoolers being birth to age 6 or so. This is my fourth and last year- next year Jasper starts Kindergarten. With the book I didn't know if I could be as involved in the decorating and projects as I have in year's past but I found that it's one thing acknowledging that in my head and another actually giving up the position. At the leader's meeting I couldn't help opening up my mouth and suggesting things. Of course, once you suggest things and others agree it's pretty much up to you to execute the ideas as well.

It was just sooo hard. The theme this year is "Together on Planet Mom" and I was pushing for the "go green and it's all one world" interpretation vs. the Space Aliens from another planet interpretation. I envisioned recycled decorations. For instance, using past year's purchases and adapting them to this year's theme. I also thought I'd use old cereal boxes for name tags and the bulletin board and recycle pages from old cookbooks and maps to pull in the Moms One World theme. So with this vision it was completely impossible for me to keep my mouth shut while they were talking space party decorations from the dollar store.

I had fun though and recruited some help so it hasn't been too much and I'm pretty much done and ready to go back to the book stuff. Plus, I figured out that it's good to be focused but it's also important to be able to take a break occasionally and do something for fun. I had fun with the name tags but I had LOTS of fun doing a write up on the theme. It's titled Motherhood Manifesto. One of them sent me a link to submit it to the MOPs international site and crazy thing- they took it! I'd love to have you check it out. So taking the time to do something else had been good. Now I feel like I've escaped the tunnel vision I felt I had before and am able to start again with the book stuff a little refreshed. So that I guess is the moral to this story. WORK HARD but take a break once on a while and HAVE FUN, just cause, too!