Chit Chat

NWR: A Birthday Party Headache!

theexactleetheexactlee member
100 Love Its 100 Comments Name Dropper
edited July 2014 in Chit Chat
Almost every year I throw a big birthday party and invite all my friends and I cater it and basically it is just a big awesome party because in case you haven't noticed, I love to celebrate stuff. It's something my friends look forward to because usually I have some kind of entertainment and it's one time of year we actually all come together. Everyone knows "No gifts" but it is BYOB because I don't drink alcohol and won't even purchase it. 

So this year I chose to have my girlfriend Cat lead everyone through one of those Painting With a Twist dealios because she is an instructor. So everyone agreed they'd pay $15 and we'd paint here in my home. I couldn't afford to pay for everyone but it was a unanimous decision that nearly 20 girls wanted to do this and were all in for the price. But it was up to me to find all the product to make it happen. Tabletop easels, 3 different kind of brushes per person, canvas and acrylics.

It was SO stressful. I drove all over Orlando trying to find this stuff. Easels weren't hard to find, it's just that each store only had 3 or 4 and wouldn't order more for me and just wanted to send me to another store and I didn't want to pay shipping on them because they were SO heavy. Amazon was zero help with easels btw. The paint brushes though, holy crap, SO EXPENSIVE. $15 was not going to come close to covering them much less the easel and canvas. I had no idea that paint brushes were like $4-$9 a piece so 3 per person for about 20 people...So finally I found a dealer on Ebay who sold them in "lots". They weren't the BEST brushes but it was a one time thing so who cares. 

So I put in my order on a Friday night and they don't do web stuff on the weekend. They are brick and mortar as well and by the time they got to my order Monday they sold a lot of my brushes so they wrote and said they'd need to substitute this for that and the other. Fine whatever, again, just for fun one time not the end of the world. I paid and made positive my address on the Ebay invoice and Paypal invoice was my own. It said confirmed. Well today (it's my birthday by the way) I get a phone call: Oops, we accidentally sent it to your sister in Ohio. We can't get them to you until she sends them back to us. Um, my sister, god love her, is a flake. She is NOT going to get those brushes back to you any time soon and no matter what, it is YOUR error. Go find me more brushes. 

Nope, they don't have anything similar, we'd have to substitute huge changes. So, now we can't paint. Nearly 3 weeks of me driving all over Orlando finding easels, stressing, figuring out how much cost I was eating in gas, headaches and whatever the heck else...and 2 days before, we can't paint. Now we are doing another craft called Alcohol Ink Coasters and it will all be fine. But seriously. Shoot me in the head. That is all, thank you for listening. LOL
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Re: NWR: A Birthday Party Headache!

  • kaos16kaos16 member
    Knottie Warrior 500 Love Its 1000 Comments First Answer
    Almost every year I throw a big birthday party and invite all my friends and I cater it and basically it is just a big awesome party because in case you haven't noticed, I love to celebrate stuff. It's something my friends look forward to because usually I have some kind of entertainment and it's one time of year we actually all come together. Everyone knows "No gifts" but it is BYOB because I don't drink alcohol and won't even purchase it. 

    So this year I chose to have my girlfriend Cat lead everyone through one of those Painting With a Twist dealios because she is an instructor. So everyone agreed they'd pay $15 and we'd paint here in my home. I couldn't afford to pay for everyone but it was a unanimous decision that nearly 20 girls wanted to do this and were all in for the price. But it was up to me to find all the product to make it happen. Tabletop easels, 3 different kind of brushes per person, canvas and acrylics.

    It was SO stressful. I drove all over Orlando trying to find this stuff. Easels weren't hard to find, it's just that each store only had 3 or 4 and wouldn't order more for me and just wanted to send me to another store and I didn't want to pay shipping on them because they were SO heavy. Amazon was zero help with easels btw. The paint brushes though, holy crap, SO EXPENSIVE. $15 was not going to come close to covering them much less the easel and canvas. I had no idea that paint brushes were like $4-$9 a piece so 3 per person for about 20 people...So finally I found a dealer on Ebay who sold them in "lots". They weren't the BEST brushes but it was a one time thing so who cares. 

    So I put in my order on a Friday night and they don't do web stuff on the weekend. They are brick and mortar as well and by the time they got to my order Monday they sold a lot of my brushes so they wrote and said they'd need to substitute this for that and the other. Fine whatever, again, just for fun one time not the end of the world. I paid and made positive my address on the Ebay invoice and Paypal invoice was my own. It said confirmed. Well today (it's my birthday by the way) I get a phone call: Oops, we accidentally sent it to your sister in Ohio. We can't get them to you until she sends them back to us. Um, my sister, god love her, is a flake. She is NOT going to get those brushes back to you any time soon and no matter what, it is YOUR error. Go find me more brushes. 

    Nope, they don't have anything similar, we'd have to substitute huge changes. So, now we can't paint. Nearly 3 weeks of me driving all over Orlando finding easels, stressing, figuring out how much cost I was eating in gas, headaches and whatever the heck else...and 2 days before, we can't paint. Now we are doing another craft called Alcohol Ink Coasters and it will all be fine. But seriously. Shoot me in the head. That is all, thank you for listening. LOL


    As an instructor of this type of class, shouldn't your friend have the supplies, at least brushes and easels?

    If she doesn't supply any materials, what the heck are you paying $15 per person for?  Around here when you take one of these classes the price includes supplies.

    How did they even get your sister's address?

    I feel like you made this waaaaayyyyy more complicated than it needed to be.

  • kaos16 said:


    As an instructor of this type of class, shouldn't your friend have the supplies, at least brushes and easels?

    If she doesn't supply any materials, what the heck are you paying $15 per person for?  Around here when you take one of these classes the price includes supplies.

    How did they even get your sister's address?

    I feel like you made this waaaaayyyyy more complicated than it needed to be.

    This. What exactly is the $15/person for if you had to supply all of painting supplies?

  • theexactleetheexactlee member
    100 Love Its 100 Comments Name Dropper
    edited July 2014
    Okay I should have been more specific. She instructs but she wasn't doing it for the company, she was doing it independently for our group of friends. So she couldn't bring the stores supplies because the store would be using them and we couldn't go to the store because it would have been much more expensive (though less stress) because it wasn't the atmosphere we were going for especially for our bigger group. But yes, yes you are both right that in general I was making the entire event far too complicated. Also she wasn't charging, the $15 was for me to hunt down the supplies and purchase and then everyone went home with their painting, easel and brushes. Because Lord knows you want that right.
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