I don’t know what was wrong with my brain yesterday.

 
I’m going to blame a lot of glitter glue sniffing but when I walked into the kindergarten class (early) to choose my table for the Christmas, sorry, “Winter” craft extravaganza, I was looking for a couple of key factors.

 
Firstly, I wanted to position myself at a table that would be exciting for the kids. Everyone wants the children to run home and say, “Chloe’s Mom’s table was the Cat’s Ass of craft tables!” or something more appropriate for a five year old.

 
Secondly, I looked at difficulty. Could the kids actually do this holiday craft themselves or was I going to be gluing and cutting and pasting while they were jamming pipe cleaners into my armpits when I least expected them and finding clever ways to tell me I look really, really old.

 
Thirdly, timing. Could they finish the craft in the allotted 11 minute intervals or whatever the stop watch had us working towards? I didn’t want the kids to feel rushed or discouraged if they couldn’t finish primping Rudolph-the non-denominational-reindeer at record speeds.

 
I immediately ruled out the gingerbread cookie table. That poor Grandma was going to have her work cut out for her. I envisioned someone having to say, “Repeat after me, ‘I will not eat any more gum drops or I will vomit on the floor’ over and over and over.”

 
I didn’t love the bead craft. For starters, I wanted a new challenge and I did the snowflake beads last year. I spent a disproportionate amount of time measuring the holes in the beads and comparing them to the bulky radius of the pipe cleaner, quickly figuring the two just weren’t going to have an easy ride. I also realized the manual dexterity being tasked on the part of the kids was far too great for this early in the morning.

 
Lastly, I didn’t want to take on a craft with high expectations. I examined the samples set out on the various tables. If one of the crafts looked like it required an architect, a year of thinking, re-visiting the task to re-tweak and then voila! I wasn’t having it. As much as I loved the pine needle jigsaw puzzle castle with moving staircase and panic room, I knew by the time our group was done their version was going to resemble a pile of pine needles and a table filled with broken dreams.

 
The sparkly snowman table was a slam-dunk. (What a rookie mistake) but my reasons were sound. I loved that each child was able to put their picture on the snow man. Every parent loves to get this craft and place it on the Christmas tree set it on the counter to be used as a coaster. It also eliminates the daunting task of asking the children to scribble their names on the craft when sometimes the name looks a little like “YoDo” was in charge.

 
I also loved that there were sparkles. What kid doesn’t love sparkles? This will come back to bite me momentarily but just to clarify, every kid loves sparkles. Every kid loves sparkles apparently more than they love gum drops, writing their names and calling me old combined.

Really the only thing the kids wanted to do was shake sparkles, sprinkle sparkles, spray me with sparkles, toss fairy dust (another name for sparkles) until the sparkles clogged my tonsils.

 
The first fistful of sparkles that came at me in slow motion was charming and sweet and didn’t appear to be tossed with any malicious intent. By the 23rd fistful (there are only 21 kids in the class so I’m going to suggest some came back for seconds) I was wishing I was drinking icing over at the gingerbread station that ironically looked immaculate and then I noticed that was because kids were licking the tablecloths. Damn! Nobody wanted to lick glittery sparkles off of my table and I left a mess.

 
A colourful, Christmassy mess.