Making Mermaid Memories

Growing up, my mom always made us a special cake for our birthdays. It was a huge highlight of the year; she would either make a cut-out style cake of the numbers representing our age, or a themed cake customized from scratch just for us. While that was all we really did for birthdays, I still remember the excitement around the process. This was before the days of Pinterest, but even so the cakes were beautiful. They took patience, time, effort, care, and love. While my mom never crafted, I wonder if her influence helped to inspire the love of creating that I developed as I got older?

I’ve often used my crafting abilities to make customized gifts for my family and friends. After the birth of my daughter, however, I started to use those skills to add to the traditions that my mother began when I was young to make my daughter’s birthday parties something extra special for her.

This past year was challenging. While I tried to shelter my daughter from things that she might not understand in an effort to spare her from hurt, kids are perceptive and I know that she senses that things have been tough. She has been extra cuddly at night, she crawls into bed with me in the morning, and her increased sensitivity has been noticeable. I wanted her birthday party to be extra special this year – the project would be an escape for me, and I hoped the party would be an escape for her.

She chose a mermaid theme, and I was beyond excited to bust out the craft stuff to make it come to life. I set out everything I needed for my therapy – cardstock, tissue paper, my Fiskars scissors and paper cutter, specialty design templates that I had created, and a handful of other materials – and I set to work. I could hear the opening notes of “Love is an Open Door” playing in the other room, and I expected my daughter to be busy for a while.

Any time I start a project, I begin with a vision. The vision for this event was designed to be simple enough to accomplish in a timely way (I’m a working mom, so my time means a lot to me), but beautiful enough to make her and her friends feel special and excited. I had three primary crafts that I thought would pull the whole thing together: under-the-sea themed decorations, mermaid goodie bags, and a pin-the-fin-on-the-shark activity for the kids.

While I was very proud of how this project turned out and the party was a huge success, the most enjoyable part of the whole thing came as a surprise to me:

Frozen was still playing when my daughter wandered into the dining room where I was working. She peered over the table edge, and asked me about my project. This disrupted my relaxation for a moment – thinking I may have lost my creative window since she was no longer distracted – but that feeling faded quickly as she showed so much curiosity in my craft. She sat down with me, and I allowed her to help me safely use the scissors to create long, beautiful ribbons of tissue paper and fasten them together to create a colourful garland. After a few minutes she slipped off my lap and sped away to catch “Let it Go” when it started playing, but she surprised me again when she came back to help when the song was done. I ended up altering my vision a bit so that she could help me, but the joy and pride that she found in creating, and the connection that we found through the process brought me the peace that I needed.

My daughter and I found joy in creativity that day. It not only brought happiness to our family and friends at the party, but was the beginning of a beautiful hobby that adds positive energy to our mother-daughter relationship. Creating and crafting pieces for her birthday will always be something I look forward to, and I am grateful for the new traditions that we are building together.