My sister has a dog named Cesar Chavez. He’s actually a Japanese dog by way of Nigeria (such a long story) but for the purposes of the holiday today, I wanted to include him and the kids in the festivities. Usually Cinco de Mayo means margaritas and adult time but with a dog named Cesar Chavez, attention should be paid.

Bethany came home to me looking online and saying things like “What do you think about toilet paper roll maracas?” and “Have you ever punched tin?” and “How about a Mexican costume for Cesar?” and it’s a tribute to her fundamentally adventurous nature that she just laughed and said her idea of a good time is coming home to a discussion about how to dress up her dog.

All crafting roads lead to Martha Stewart and after considering her punched tin napkin rings, I realized I don’t use napkin rings and don’t have an aluminum pan to cut up. Raffia flowers, however? I’m all over that. And homemade sombreros? Yes please!

My plan was to make a sombrero for each of the kids and decorate them with flowers then we could have an event of some kind. What exactly was a little unclear and I thought I’d figure that out later. I had about 3 hours before my niece came home, which I thought would be plenty of time to bang out a bunch of flowers and make sombreros out of cardboard or newspaper or something and then decorate them and possibly the house. Piece of cake.

Please stop laughing.

Martha has this effect on people.

When I looked at the flower instructions they required a “flower loom.” I muttered “A flower loom? What the heck is that and who would have one of those?” and then googled it. Bethany looked over my shoulder at the picture and said “Oh, I have one. I’ll go get it” and came back with a handful of plastic looms all different shapes and colors.Martha has that effect on people, too.

Turns out flowers are easy to make but slightly time intensive. 2 hours later I had this many:

Made of a special substance called “wraphia:”

And no sombrero. It’s possible a fair amount of time went to putting a little serape on Cesar Chavez:

And talking him into sitting still:

Late afternoon when I was running out of time, I made a trial sombrero and it was a bit of a slapdash affair. So I painted it and created some ball fringe for it. When my niece came home and saw the flowers, she thought we should put them all over the hat, so we did.

Getting Cesar to sit still for a serape AND a hat took 3 people and a ton of treats:

Mexican? Possibly not. But hilarious.

After all that work, it goes without saying that the night ended with:

Feliz Cinco de Mayo a todos (y gracias Cesar)!!