One day the time will come to tear down this house we built with dreams, sweat and tears. If they pull the rafters first, or if they knock it over with a crane, or if it burns quickly after sitting empty for years, or if it slowly decomposes on this prairie or if they decide to disassemble it board by board, tile by tile, inch by inch, I am telling you the one thing that will certainly remain in the end is the glitter.

And I could blame my daughters, but they have yet to access their checking accounts, so, yeah, I’m the problem. Over the years, I have allowed myself to succumb to the little crafty girl inside of me and buy the gems for the art project, the shiny beads for the bracelets, the sparkly stickers for everything and the little Disney dress that shimmers and left evidence of the twirling done years ago under every floorboard in this house. Most regrettably, I bought the balloons with the sparkly confetti inside for the seven-year-old sleepover, not considering that they would be the first and most fun to pop. Let this serve as a warning to young, creative mothers out there–yesterday, I vacuumed one of those confetti pieces up in the pantry. Three. Years. After. The. Party.

And while I’d like to tell you that I learned from my twinkling mistakes, I confess, I did not. But you can learn from me. Because I’ve done it again and, this time, it’s really bad.

So here’s the deal: My ten-year-old and her friends had a fun group Halloween costume idea. They want to go as pop (or soda for those of you in the south). This vision requires cute sweatshirts, matching tutus and headbands with soda cans attached to the top.
And because time is a thief, these ten-year-old girls may only have a couple dress-up, trick-or-treating years left in them, so I jumped on this cute, homemade idea. Another mom and I got to work—her on the Cricut, cutting out vinyl to make the shirts, and me, truly happy to help my daughter make the tutus and headbands, an art I’ve mastered throughout the years, making my girls into unicorns, scarecrows, fish, mermaids and witches. (No one loves a Halloween costume effort more than me…as long as I can use my hot glue gun.)

First step? Ordering the tulle I needed to make tutus that would match Dr. Pepper, Sprite, Coke, Root Beer and one purple Bloom Energy Drink.

I blame rural living for what came next. Some would call it an error in judgement, but if I was able to put my hands or eyeballs on this shimmery, sparkly, glittery nightmare of a product, I would have made better decisions. But because we live an hour and a half away from the nearest big craft store, I took to Amazon to make my selections for delivery without reading one single review.

Now, I can’t stress this enough: a photo of a shiny craft supply does not accurately portray how many millions of sparkles are going to spray out of the packaging and on to your countertop, kitchen table, floor, chairs, couch, hair, dog, cat, house plants, baking supplies, dishes, spaghetti supper, lizard, hamster, husband, clothes closet, beds, chandelier, rugs, eyeballs, butt crack and cattle herd. I opened the box and immediately got glitter lung.

And because I waited until the last minute to unveil what we were working with, with no plans to head to the big town and no time to re-order, my daughter and I had to buckle down, put on our GPG (Glitter Protective Gear,) and deal with the repercussions of five mothers hating my guts when I delivered the goods a few days later, tied up tight in plastic hazmat style garbage bags followed by a text that read: “Sorry about the glitter. What’s done is done.”

Except it’s not done. Given my previous experience with the supply, the error of my ways will sparkle on this ranch for generations to come. I woke up this morning and picked three gold sparkles out of my husband’s mustache. Ever seen puppy poop sparkle? Do you like glitter seasoning in your soup?

“There’s glitter in places I didn’t know glitter could go!” declared Edie, thrilled by it all.

If you need me, I’ll be vacuuming, delivering peace offering lint rollers to the moms and writing a strongly worded Amazon review.

Hope you had a Happy (and maybe less sparkly) Halloween!