Average Jane Says TGIF!

Yesterday I spent the early part of my workday filing away the masses of papers that had covered my entire desk. I followed up with a thorough cleaning of all desk surfaces – and, boy, were they dirty! The only remaining mess source is the rapidly-expiring bouquet of lilacs I brought in on Monday. I may have to cut some more flowers to replace them – it was nice having fresh blossoms in the office.

Tomorrow we’re all keeping our fingers crossed that it doesn’t rain during my niece’s birthday party. There’s an inflatable bouncy castle on order, so it would be a shame if it couldn’t be used. I, personally, am very much looking forward to leaping around in the bouncy castle once all the kids leave!

I’m heading over early to help with the party prep and make punch. I’ve hosted or co-hosted a LOT of baby showers recently, so I’ve developed some standards for party punch that the uninitiated might not consider. For example, one should always take into account the color of the finished product. At one shower, the punch tasted delicious but the color…well, to use an out-of-context quote from “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” it could be described as “obscenely biological.” I’ve found a recipe that uses frozen condensed orange juice and lemonade, club soda, ginger ale, and a scoop of powdered punch mix. Basically it ends up being sparkling Kool-aid with visible pulp, which is fine. The important thing is that all the artificial dyes in the punch mix make the concoction a pleasing shade of pink.

I have an enormous collection of faux copper Jell-o molds, so I tried to make an attractive ice ring for the punch the last time around. Unfortunately, I dropped it in the sink as I was unmolding it, so it ended up floating in the punchbowl as a group of oddly-curved icebergs. I’m going to let my sister be in charge of the punch accoutrements this time. Some strawberry sherbet would be a nice accent, I think.

It promises to be a fairly relaxed weekend after that. My husband has a gig on Saturday night (he’s a drummer), so I suppose I’ll have to seek out some entertainment plans, lest I spend the evening vegging in front of the TV (again). On Sunday, maybe I can finally get around to some yard work. All of you – have a lovely weekend yourselves!