Vivo! (And I don’t mean the tempo marking.) | This WONDERfilled Life
It’s fall 2021, and I can’t believe we’re still in this mess of a pandemic. That aside, our lives have sort of resumed something that looks like our life pre-COVID. Both kids are back in in-person school, and while Super is still teaching from home my orchestral/music work is picking up steadily, though with heavy health protocols (which I am totally okay with). So we thought we’d try and get our outdoor theater up and running, if only for one night and a tiny amount of guests. Netflix’s animated film, VIVO, came out a few weeks ago and it’s been a HIT here, but then pretty much anything LMM (Lin-Manuel Miranda) does is a hit here…ask me about my current Hamilton obsession! Annnny ways…we decided to just hold a small backyard movie night, and you know I can’t just have people over for something like that. I have to make it an experienced even just a little one. Given more time, I had some MAJOR plans for the backyard, which included a kids “Mambo Cubana” Club with lights and the bubble machine and a giant glow in the dark Lutador (swamp snake) that wrapped around the movie screen…but alas…re-entry to real life is hard and time management is even harder with kids in two different schools and a puppy to look after and train. So I am learning to scale things back, and get help when I can…which means I ordered a few things from Oriental Trading Company, and managed to make one cut out, and host a really nice evening. It was hard to scale back my ideas but I was thankful I did as I had several other projects going that week.
I wanted a “Cuban” or “Miami” nights vibe, so I grabbed some of these palm leaf placemats from Oriental Trading Company and simply taped them up and around. I also was able to save all of them when the night was over to reused on a future party, we are throwing down in our yard when this shitstorm of a pandemic is over…you’ve been warned.
I also grabbed these super pretty, and extremely affordable flower/leaf streamers. I was so surprised at how easy these were. Admittedly I did pull too hard on two of them and had to tape the ends back together but I don’t think anyone noticed and I was able to save all four strands for future use as well. Each strand was less than $5 so a real punch of color and aesthetic for the money, HIGHLY recommend.
Originally for food I wanted to do popcorn and churros (my plan was to hit up Costco and just keep them in the oven until show time) but I didn’t really love the idea of going to Costco on a Saturday so instead we ordered pizza from the place around the corner (stimulating our local economy = win) and I grabbed some boxes of Stan’s donuts at the grocery store. We always have ample microwave popcorn so I popped up several bags and transferred to lunch bags for ease and sanitation. It all worked perfectly and I think we all had our fair share of what spoke to us! HA!
After the movie the kids all played and danced to the music and P used her camera to take a million pictures and selfies.
I think Vivo is my best character cut out to date…though the aliens from our “Spaceship Eddylow” party last year are close second.
If you could make any character for a party who would you pick?
I have some things up my sleeve for Halloween this year…lets just say our “Trunk or Treat” should be really really “SUPER”…😉
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