Do you remember your favorite birthday as a child? For most of us, it’s a blur of pool parties, sunny backyards, and bats flying into piñatas. Maybe there was the odd bash held at the local McDonald’s around age 5 if you were lucky. But twin sisters Eliza and Jade aren’t like “most of us.” For starters, they’re cooler, and likely much better at potting a plant than we’ll ever be.
Let’s set the scene. In Seattle, Eliza and Jade were about to turn 8 years old. While everyone else had their parties at bowling alleys, amusement parks, and ice skating rinks, these two decided to try something different. Then, the idea hit them: Can you throw a party at a hardware store? Preferably at one known for its “helpful hardware folks?”
The twins approached their mom with a birthday wish: They wanted to throw a party at one of their favorite neighborhood spots. To their surprise, the Maple Leaf Ace Hardware answered with a resounding yes.
That’s how these 8-year-old twins landed an Ace Hardware birthday party, complete with matching aprons, personalized name tags, and 25 of their friends clocked in as “employees for a day.”
A personal birthday wish
This wasn’t a random choice. The twins’ mom, Hillary, worked at that very same Ace about 20 years ago back in her high school and college days. The family still drops by all the time to catch up with old friends, she says, although not everyone’s there for chit-chat. “[The girls] are always put to work,” she told Seattle’s SPIRIT 105.3. “The owner has little jobs for them.” During those visits, Eliza and Jade would close store bins and tidy stray items off the floor. They took their jobs seriously as if they were getting paid to do it.
When the girls said they wanted their party there, Hillary didn’t bat an eye. But would the store go for it? “I really did not think that they would say yes,” she admitted. Consider it birthday luck: John, the owner of that particular Ace Hardware location, understood the girls’ vision and said yes in a heartbeat. “He’s incredible, and was like, ‘Yeah, let’s do it,” said Hillary.
The nuts and bolts
When the day of the party finally arrived, Maple Leaf Ace Hardware was ready. Upon entering, guests were greeted by a neat row of tiny aprons, each with a personalized name tag (because if you’re an employee for a day, you’d better look official). The kids planted and decorated their own flower pots, and picked up a little botany along the way. They wired up small battery-powered fans for a hands-on STEM project, then decorated those too. Toss in a couple temporary hardware tattoos for kids and grown-ups, plus cake and plenty of dancing, and you’ve got a recipe for a perfect birthday.
Plenty of the guests showed up unsure what you could possibly do at a hardware store. The dirt from the potting won them over fast (“What child doesn’t love dirt?” asked Hillary). And the aprons, with real pockets, didn’t hurt either. Even the party favors stayed on theme: sturdy buckets straight off an Ace shelf, packed with goodies and labeled “Thank you for coming to Eliza and Jade’s birthday party.”
Why a neighborhood Ace could pull this off
Ace Hardware may look like one big national chain (the same red sign marks each location, and we’ve all heard that jingle approximately ten million times), but it actually runs as a retailer-owned cooperative. People who live in the neighborhood own local locations, and those owners have the freedom to run their stores the way their community wants them to.
So, if you’ve been scratching your head wondering how one store could drop everything to host a birthday party, now you know. Events like Eliza and Jade’s are part of Ace’s community programming, which plays a huge role at so many of these stores across the nation: recycling programs, gardening demos, philanthropic car shows, fundraisers for local children’s hospitals. In the grand scheme of things, throwing a party for two devoted little regulars seems quite simple.
Its reputation’s well-earned: Ace really is the place for “helpful hardware folks.”
Who’s next?
When their mom, Hillary (@hillarysarau), posted about the party on Instagram, her comment section lit up with praise: for the girls, for the store’s crew, and for Ace Hardware itself.
“This is so special. I LOVE it when kids have interests that might be considered unusual, but the adults around them do everything possible to accept, respect, and indulge those interests,” wrote one person.
Another chimed in, “Ace Hardware is such a valuable place in any community! When I was young, my mom would take me to our local Ace for whatever science fair, engineering build, creative endeavor I had in my head, and the lovely humans at Ace would help us figure out how to make it happen.”
Even Ace’s official account joined the comments and wished the girls a happy birthday.
Then, a winner: “Does Ace do this for adults, too? I’m asking for a friend (me).”
Let them eat cake
Kids usually know exactly what delights them. Grown-ups would be wise to listen. For their birthdays, Eliza and Jade didn’t want anything fancy, just a rack of aprons, a little dirt under their fingernails, and a day spent with their favorite people in a place they already loved. Thank goodness for neighborhood hardware stores!
