Mini-post: pompoms

We visited our friend Katie last week and brought along some help, and made a million pompoms. I'm only exaggerating slightly.

Katie works at The Candy Store, the same place that's providing us with our candy buffet for the reception. We love the Candy Store, and we especially love Katie; she is the most enthusiastic candy lover we have ever met, and she also loves Jane Austen, making her my immediate friend. Katie offered to teach us how to make tissue paper pompoms for the wedding, and months ago, we agreed. We then put off doing it 'til the last month so that we'd be able to store forty of these fluffy suckers in our art-room-turned-wedding-lair, thinking these things would be puffed up and filling the apartment like a new species of Tribbles. We did not realize that the pompoms would actually stay folded up until their arrival at the wedding venue, however, so I shake my head a little at our silliness. Regardless, the timing worked great, and the evening provided another opportunity to unwind while still being productive.

Tissue pompoms are deceptively pretty for being so easy to make. Katie showed Brian, Sir Tam, our friend Jo, and myself how to fold the tissue paper like a giant fan, cut the ends into curves or points, and tie a twist tie 'round the middle. Fluffing is then done by spreading apart the layers into two fans (see Brian's tie) and then separating out each little layer until the whole thing looks like a dahlia. On this crafting evening, however, our job was simply to fold, cut, and tie...all fluffing, like I said, is done on-site. Well, apparently my over-stressed brain just couldn't grasp that, and I kept fluffing the damn things open. After the fourth or fifth one, people started shouting at me and I'd hastily put the pompom down, often half-fluffed, bewildered with myself for not being able to follow the simple instructions. So at the end of the night, we had a giant bag full of neatly flat-folded pompoms waiting for our wedding...and about a half-dozen dahlia-esque fluffed poms that I'd accidentally made while on autopilot. Let's be fair, though, people: I've been so distracted lately that I forgot to put conditioner in my hair the other morning (even though I've followed the exact same shower routine for ten years), and almost put toothpaste in my hair instead of hair wax. Making a few pompoms is less ridiculous than toothpaste head.

Everyone had a great time, and James--Katie's hubby and all around cool guy--took photos, and even gave us three albums' worth of music from his band, Reverb Syndicate, to play during our reception. This is wonderful because good surf music can be hard to come by. (If anyone wants an easy wedding gift, I'd love hardcopies of Reverb's three CD's. Just sayin.)

We ate cupcakes, folded and folded, and ended up with twice the intended number of poms at the end. This is one of those little moments where I indulge in the happy thought that someone else will have to fluff these while I'm off getting dressed that day. Sorry, decorating crew! Thanks again, Katie, for a super fun evening and for providing us paper and your genius for the craft! We're certain the poms will be the highlight of our decor.