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Apr 21, 2022Liked by Virginia Sole-Smith

"Maybe at a children’s birthday party, at least in certain socioeconomic situations, it would be about making sure you have a lot of veggies and really healthy snacks. So we’re all performing how much we care about making sure children eat a variety of fruits and vegetables."

Ha ha ha ha ha. My kid's birthday party was the other weekend. We had two pinatas and a HUGE bowl of candy because I overestimated how much candy you need to fill two pinatas. Also Smartfood, salted popcorn, pretzels, juice boxes, pizza, and So Many Cupcakes (which I did not bake myself, which was kind of a big deal letting-go situation for me).

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That sounds like an EXCELLENT party. (And yay for letting go!)

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LOVE THIS. My middle kid is having a handful of friends over in a few weeks for a mid morning birthday donut party for turning 6. I was starting to feel guilt about only having donuts, and was thinking I might also have some fruit, etc. But, then I snapped out of that garbage, and I'm back to planning of having as shit ton of donuts out with no policing. It's LIBERATING.

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Apr 24, 2022Liked by Virginia Sole-Smith

Having people over Stresses Me Out, partly because I think everything has to be super-clean and I should make a bunch of snacks from scratch. So this really helped! Now I wanna check out Leanne's cookbooks and just BUY fun snacks and give myself permission to have a messy kitchen!

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I once wrote a piece for Real Simple about this group of friends who had a dinner party every week because they agreed ahead of time: The house doesn’t have to be clean. It made it so much more doable to just publicly remove that pressure. Genius.

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I agree that this is the way. If you feel like you have to clean before they come over, then then probably aren't worth the effort... It's a take it or leave it situation.

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While listening to this, I wondered if you are familiar with Kendra Adachi @thelazygenius? She's really big on putting systems in place to easily make a plan to "feed your people" without prescribing WHAT food is best. One of her mantras are "Plan your hot dogs" because you KNOW you are going to have them you might as well plan to have them on busy days, etc. Anyway, she's might be a good future podcast guest. Her approach to meal planning has been life changing for my family and my mental load. :)

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