This tinsel is a pretty good way to spend $15

One of the unexpected winners of the at-home birthday celebration I threw for my girlfriend a couple of weeks ago was the pack of metallic tinsely curtains ($15.99 for two silver and two gold on Amazon) I bought.

Each curtain is approximately the width of a door and fairly long/tall, with a horizontal adhesive strip at the top; I put three over the window/door to the terrace, and one over the bedroom door, and they genuinely made the space feel different and celebratory.

In fact, we liked them so much that we got a second pack to use for the “office holiday party” that we had on Tuesday night.

The curtains flutter and reflect light in a really nice way, and you actually don’t need to do anything else to make them shine. But if you want to take things up a notch, you could turn on a mini LED party light. (We used the one that came in a company swag bag my girlfriend received a couple of months ago, but you can get a similar one for $16.99 on Amazon.)

Even though you can see some window showing behind the curtains in these photos, they look great and plenty thick IRL. (But if you wanted to make them appear thicker, you could easily double them up.)

We also kept them up for our “supercouch” (aka air mattress inflated in front of the couch) movie day.

I was pleasantly surprised by how much delight/novelty the curtains provided; in this bleak year, it’s always nice when a small thing actually helps quite a bit. If you’re a New Year’s Eve person and want to do something to mark the occasion while also being safe, or if someone in your household has a birthday coming up, these are totally worth it.

Get the gold and silver four-pack from Amazon for $15.99. (They also come in a bunch of other colors, like this pretty rose gold.) ✨

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Just a bunch of Christmas shit I’m into right now

Hi! Even though Christmas is only a few days away and a lot of your planning/shopping/decorating is likely done, I thought I’d share some of the festive recipes/playlists/DIY projects I’m into right now!

Decorations

I bought the wooden Advent spiral above from OakTree Vibrations on Etsy and it’s been such a nice addition to our home! (It looks like the shop is currently closed FYI.) Figuring out the right size candles was a Whole Thing, but I’m currently using these white candles with a little ball of clay stuck under each one to hold them in place.

I’m also very, very, very happy with my bay leaf wreath, which I’ve wanted for years.

This is my go-to method for lighting a tree; it works perfectly every time.

Here’s a Twitter thread of all my favorite Christmas aesthetics.

If you want some additional inspiration/dreaminess, look no further than this Swedish blog.

And if you want to go in an entirely different direction (read: kitsch), I cannot recommend these gold and silver “curtains” ($15.99 for a set of four from Amazon) enough! I bought them as part of the decor for my girlfriend’s birthday last week and she loved them — they totally transformed our space and made it look like a cozy/cool bar. Pair it with a mini LED party light (which we had lying around from a company swag bag, but you can get one for $16.99 on Amazon) on the red/green setting and you’ll be in business.

Finally, a tiny tip from me to you: If you have a smart plug, put your Christmas tree on it! It’s really nice to be able to turn it off from bed at night, especially if you live alone — it’s like having someone tuck you in.

Things to make

Some fun things from my IG saved items: googly eyes on gifts, a gift wrap gift bow, peppermint sparkle, a Caprese candy cane board, and baked gruyère with garlic and herb (recipe here).

Also: how to transform a Christmas garland, how to make a very cute Christmas tree train, and how to make a gift bow out of newsprint. I’m also planning to make tissue paper stars and eggnog snickerdoodles this week.

Holiday entertainment

TV: I’ve been absolutely obsessed with NYT Cooking’s Christmas cookie videos; they are all so soothing and nice! I also love 2019’s cookie medley; Susan Spungen feels like a real life version of Meryl Streep’s character in It’s Complicated. We’ve also been watching old holiday themed Barefoot Contessa episodes, which is delightful.

Movies: Jingle Jangle is great! Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square, however, is unwatchable. And I’m due for a Carol rewatch. On Wednesday, we’re going to inflate the air mattress in front of the couch (basically turning the living room into one large soft square) and cover everything in Christmas/winter blankets, and then we’re going to watch National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, Elf, and a couple other classics.

Books: David Sedaris’s “SantaLand Diaries” is a classic. And I’m really enjoying re-reading Elin Hildebrand’s Winter Street novels.

Holiday vibes

Here are some of my favorite Christmas playlists and albums:

• Santa Claus is a Black man by Aminatou Sow

• Noel by Caity Weaver

• Jazz & Blues Christmas

• French Christmas

• Songs For Christmas — Sufjan Stevens

• Simply Christmas — Leslie Odom Jr.

• A Charlie Brown Christmas

I definitely need to make a new mega Christmas playlist at some point soon because the one I spent several years curating has been lost in the abyss of iTunes on old computers.

I’m also still drinking a lot of hot chocolate, and VanLeeuwen’s peppermint stick ice cream is currently on my grocery list.

Not all yule logs are created equal! After trying a bunch, I’ve found that I like this fireplace best. I also love this soothing snowy scene.

Finally, here are some old pieces of mine/that I edited that you might enjoy right now:

• Why Miniature Christmas Villages Are Such A Big Thing

• 37 Holiday Self-Care Tips For Anyone Who Is Kind Of Not OK RN

• 4 Ways To Easily Remove Stubborn Price Stickers From Gifts

• How to Make a Holiday Family Photo Book

• How to Spend Christmas Alone

• How to Make Socially Distanced Holidays Actually Feel Special

• How to Make Your Pandemic Holiday Feel Like a HOLIDAY

• How to Be Gracious About a Truly Horrible Gift

• Great Gifts and How to Give Them

• AITAWICTG (Am I the Asshole When It Comes To Gifts)?

And there’s still time to send gifts/gift cards to trans young people in need via @transanta! ✨

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Notes on Camp (Pride)

A couple weeks ago, my girlfriend and I threw a Pride party. Pride means something different to every queer person; this year, she and I were both in need of community, friendship, joy, humor, creativity, and something public(ish), and that’s exactly what we got. The party was affirming and special and lovely and fun, and I’m so glad we did it.

So that is what the party was about, but that’s not what Pride as a whole is about (read more on that topic in the New York Times here and here), and it’s not what this post is about! This post is about cute enamel pins, delicious jello shots, and tips for assembling beaded friendship bracelets when you’ve consumed several of said jello shots and are sitting on a very windy roof. I actually wasn’t planning to write about the party at all, but after I got some questions about it on Instagram, I decided to share some details about the DIY projects, the relevant shopping links*, and my thoughts on what worked well. But I don’t want to give the impression that that’s all that this party (or Pride in general) meant to me.

*If this post happens to generate any affiliate revenue, I’m planning to donate it to the Audre Lorde project.

Cool? Cool. Onto the party!

The theme

We started planning this party right after the Met Gala, so when the topic of theme came up, I was like, “Literal camp? Please, I’m begging you????” (I’ve always just loved summer camp shit.) The camp theme worked out well — it’s summery, it’s equal parts wholesome and horny, and it’s really practical/inexpensive to pull off. (Like, most of what we needed could be found at any party store/craft store/big-box store.) Plus, allies could easily dress on theme without worrying about being appropriative.

The week leading up to the party felt like a combination of Halloween, school plays, and summer camp, and I was living for it. It’s been a while since I got to do a big burst of arts and crafts like this, and it felt great.

The refreshments

We didn’t do anything too special in this regard, but we did make these cherry lemonade jello shots. I tend to hate the taste of jello shots but these did not taste like vodka at all. Definitely recommend! I also made French onion dip using the classic Lipton mix because it never fails, and I believe in giving people what they want!

The decorations

We kept the decor very low-key overall, and bought everything from Michaels and Party City. Early on, we talked about doing more in terms of decor, but it wasn’t logistically possible and it wouldn’t have been worth it anyway. As someone who always wants to do The Most (I take after my mom in this regard!), it was nice to give myself permission to just…not.

We did spend a not-insignificant amount of time at Party City on 14th Street trying to figure out the exact right combination of colored cups for our rainbow. (They stock…way more options than you might think?!) I think every single color was in our cart briefly at some point, but honestly, it was worth it. And the coral cups we found on a Pantone Color of the Year display at the last minute really pulled their weight. Also, the Pendleton-knockoff blanket my girlfriend found in the back of her closet two days before the party made a great second tablecloth. We also bought glow sticks and bubbles, and asked a friend to bring her Instax camera.

The pennants

My girlfriend suggested we make collegiate-style pennants as part of the decor, and I had made some in the past and thought it would be a good low-lift option for this party! This project was mostly just a treat for me, and an excuse to dust off my beloved Cricut (gifted to me years ago). The pennant slogans were Gal Pals, Gay!, Bottoms, We’re Tops!, Both Teams, Pride, and Horny. And you might not be able to tell from the photos, but the lettering was glittery/holographic. 

The pronoun koozies

I decided to buy a set of 12 solid colored koozies on Amazon during one of our big party purchases, thinking they’d be cute/colorful/festive, and that maybe I could add some fun text onto them. The colors were a bit disappointing IRL — like, a third of them were really muddy — so I decided to buy a second 12-pack of all lavender koozies, which were perfect, especially alongside the brighter colors. I really wanted to Cricut some kind of word or phrase onto them, but I knew whatever I went with would have to be really short to fit/be legible. Meanwhile, we’d had a difficult time finding pronoun stickers or temporary tattoos in time for the party. It was my girlfriend’s idea to just put the pronouns on the koozies, and it felt like a win-win. (I also left several blank so there were options.)

For reasons too boring and complicated to get into here, I had a bunch of unexpected trouble with the iron-on vinyl at first, so these projects could have looked a lot better, but I think they still looked pretty OK! The rainbow holographic vinyl is really special and looked so beautiful on the koozies IRL, and I’m excited to use it on other projects! (Oh, and if you’re wondering, that font is Corben Bold.)

Shopping list:

• Lavender coozies ($8.77 for 12 from Amazon)

• Multicolor coozies ($9.97 for 12 from Amazon)

• Rainbow mylar balloons ($6.30 for three from Amazon)

• Fluorescent yellow glitter iron-on ($6 from Cricut, found at Michael’s)

• Silver holographic iron-on ($11.99 from Michael’s)

• Rainbow ombré holographic iron-on ($11.99 from Michael’s)

The friendship bracelets

This was also my girlfriend’s idea, and I was all for it, as I love friendship bracelets. I’m also a big fan of having some sort of activity at every party that’s neither drinking nor dancing. We had a bunch of embroidery floss for braided bracelets at the ready, but — perhaps unsurprisingly — everyone wanted to make letter bead bracelets that said things like “horny” and “butthole” and “Kirstie Alley” instead.

Here’s what I will say: I spent my evenings the week leading up to the party making beaded bracelets for my girlfriend and I and for some of my close friends, because I wanted to get good at it before we unleashed them on the world. And it turns out, this was the right move — letter bead bracelets are surprisingly fussy! For starters, you can’t put most letter beads on embroidery floss (it’s too thick), and working with the elastic cord definitely takes some getting used to. And you need to have some kind of stopper on the string when you are adding the beads so they don’t fall off. Also, if people fuck up when tying a completed bead bracelet, it’ll break. They’ll have wasted all that time and energy making a bracelet, and you’ll end up with beads everywhere, which no one wants. In our case, I ended up printing out a bunch of tips for making the beaded bracelets + an image of how to tie them in case I wasn’t around to do it, which felt a tiny bit extra but turned out to be a good idea. Another tip: keep all of the supplies on large tray to help avoid a major bead incident and to make cleanup easier. (The tray was also very helpful when I was working on the bracelets in the apartment.) And don’t ignore the advice to pre-stretch the cord, and to reinforce the knot with super glue.

That said, it was completely worth the effort because the bracelets were cute and funny and fun and very photogenic. And a lot more people than I was expecting to made bracelets, which made me happy! But it’s not the kind of thing we could have just decided to do a day before and had it work.

Tutorials I used:

• Inspiration pic

• How to Make a Beaded Bracelet (SAY WHAT YOU WILL ABOUT WIKIHOW BUT THEY DO GENUINELY GOOD SERVICE JOURNALISM)

• How to Make Stretch Bracelets That Don't Break

• Working With Stretch Magic

Shopping list:

• Black and white letter beads ($10.69 from Amazon)

• Colorful letter beads ($10.69 from Amazon)

• Rainbow assortment pony beads ($16.98 from Amazon)

• Pastel and jelly bead kit ($16.98 from Amazon)

• Mini alligator clamps, used as bead stoppers ($5.99 from Amazon)

• Elastic bead cord ($6.59 from Amazon)

• We also bought a small bag of shape beads at Michael’s that had hearts, stars, peace signs, and flowers in assorted colors that got a lot of use!

The outfits

Our guests showed up in a range of great on-theme looks that included “slutty Boy Scout,” a Smokey Bear–style uniform and hat, and an extremely minor character in The Parent Trap. There were also lots of good neckerchiefs and accessories, and everyone looked so summery and cute! (We also bought a pack of 12 neckerchiefs in solid colors in case anyone was feeling stressed about what to wear.) 

For our part, my girlfriend and I decided to bring Big Camp Counselor Energy. (TBH, I think I bring that energy…most days.)

I wore a light blue ringer tee, mustard yellow dolphin shorts with a pastel rainbow patch, a rainbow striped bandanna, my sparkle emoji pin, and my National Parks–inspired rainbow pin that says “This land was made for you and me.” (This pin makes me and also everyone who reads it surprisingly emotional???) And I wore striped camp socks and my blue Crocinstocks from Freedom Moses. My girlfriend’s outfit was essentially the same, but she had a mustard yellow ringer tee, lavender shorts, lavender slides, and her own enamel pins. And we both had gold whistles, plus friendship bracelets we made ourselves that matched our own personal aesthetics.

I also went to Sephora for a makeup mini the day of, which is a free thing anyone can do! You just have to book ahead (go here, and then filter by “services”) and they’ll do a 15-minute makeup application of your choosing (so, in my case, eye makeup and fake lashes). It was nice to not have to worry about it, and meant I didn’t have to buy the incredibly beautiful $40 Tarte palette for just a single use of that amazing gold glittery shadow.

Shopping list: 

• Ringer tees ($28 each from Shop Camp)

• Pastel rainbow patches ($8.53 each from Etsy)

• Striped bandanas ($18.50 from Madewell)

• Yellow shorts, which run EXTREMELY small ($12.99 from Amazon)

• Lavender shorts ($12.11 from Amazon)

• Sparkle pin (from Pintrill but currently sold out)

• “This land” pin ($10, Lucky Horse Press)

• Striped socks ($11.99 for four pairs from Amazon)

• Sandals ($35 each or currently buy two, get one free from Freedom Moses)

• Gold whistles ($6.69 for three from Amazon)

One final thing…

I’ve written before about how much I love The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker, and once again, it really came in handy! We put so much of the advice from the book into practice for this party, including pre-game your guests, don’t be a chill host, and don’t end a funeral with logistics. But the tip that really served us was setting a purpose for the gathering. Doing that back in May was really helpful, and it meant we knew exactly what a “good” party would feel like. It was just a great night all around, and everyone who came really showed up for us. It was all really special, and I just feel so happy and grateful right now! ☀️

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