The Eclectic Otter: March 2017

For whatever reason, it feels like this month has just flown by. I know part of the reason is that so much of the beginning part was filled with preparations for the big Pi Day party but it still seems crazy how fast it has gone. Not a lot of crafting has been going on although did buy supplies for a few new things, including finally getting an album for scrapbooking (even though I posted about making my first pocket page over a year ago). The husband bear and I have also been keeping ourselves entertained by discussing a pair of married Dungeons and Dragons character who have a follower that acts as a nanny for their children. I'm still not involved in a game right now but we are attempting to negotiate something. At the moment I'm just amused to think about ways that DnD skills could be used to entertain children. Currently, the nanny is a bard with perform- storytelling and singing for lullabies. I've also been working hard to gather Magikarp candy during the special water event this past week in the hopes that I can evolve a Gyarados without keeping a Magikarp buddy for forever.

How to Celebrate Everything: Recipes and Rituals for Birthdays, Holidays, Family Dinners, and Every Day In Between by Jenny Rosenstrach

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

How to Celebrate Everything is about creating your own rituals for everything from widely recognized holidays, to birthdays, to celebrations that are completely made up and unique to your family. As it is mainly a cookbook it focuses on making connections and memories through food. There is an entire chapter devoted to ways to make regular everyday dinners more meaningful. Also included is a birthday chapter, with suggestions for birthday breakfasts, cakes, and special dinners. There's even a short section about hosting kids birthday parties complete with game and craft ideas. Every ritual and recipe has a description of how it came to be a part of their family's story so that you can get ideas of where to create rituals for your own family. While I understand that technically my husband and I count as a 'family' and can and should have our own rituals, this book makes me really wish that we had kids.

Soup Swap: Comforting Recipes to Make and Share by Kathy Gunst

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The premise of this book is really interesting. It offers tips and suggestions for hosting regular soup swap parties. It sounds like a great way to share food with friends and try new soups. The basics are that everyone brings a soup to share and ends up with leftovers for later, a great way to have a variety of warm winter soups without so much cooking. The fact that I already own several cookbooks focused on soup means that I already had recipes for most of the types of soup. However, the tips for toppings, sides, and transporting the soups are pretty cool. Grilled cheese croutons sound particularly tasty and awesome.

Thug Kitchen: The Official Cookbook: Eat Like You Give a F*ck by Thug Kitchen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The first thing that you need to know about this book should be obvious from the title, there is going to be cursing. In order to enjoy this book, you need to be alright with it, or at least able to overlook it and get on with your life. Once you are able to either embrace it or look past it there is a ton of great stuff in here. Thug Kitchen is all about how to eat healthier and the recipes in this book are completely vegan. It includes basic information about how to cook a variety of grains and tofu. We are most definitely not vegan but certainly could use some healthier recipes. Some of the recipes just aren't going to make it into our rotation, there's just something off to me about enchiladas without meat and no way I can convince my husband to switch to biscuits and lentil gravy for breakfast. Other things, like the soups and spinach mushroom lasagna sound really good. Several of the breakfast or dessert recipes only change from regular milk to non-dairy milk. If that's all it takes to make a start eating healthier than that seems like a good idea. One final thing here, this book is funny. It is filled with little things to make you laugh such as calling salads, plant nachos. I need more plant nachos in my life.

Eat Like a Gilmore: The Unofficial Cookbook for Fans of Gilmore Girls by Kristi Carlson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you are a fan of the Gilmore Girls series and food, then this is the cookbook you've been waiting for. It provides recipes to recreate your favorite recipes from the show. Each recipe is marked with an icon showing where it is served, most are either made by Sukie for the inn or Luke's dinner. Between the two there are a generous amount of delicious sounding breakfast options. Also included are meals from Sunday night dinners at Emily's and around the town. The recipe that I'm most interested in is the chocolate chocolate chocolate ice cream from Taylor's ice cream shop.

Top Secret Recipes Unlocked: All New Home Clones of America's Favorite Brand-Name Foods by Todd Wilbur

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Not as many recipes I was interested in this volume. There are quite a few Starbucks copycat recipes if you're interested in that but I'm not a big fan. Also lots of burgers which I rarely feel like I need a recipe to re-create.

While I was putting this post together I realized that the books I had done extensive reviews for made it seem like all I read this month was cookbooks and that's really not the case. Here are some other things I've finished this month.

Book Scavenger by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a story about hunting for hidden books and secret codes. The characters are fans of an imaginary game called Book Scavenger and discover a new game. Book Scavenger sounds like it would be super fun to play if it existed in real life. Players hide books for others to find using clues. There are references to many codes and codebreaking methods mentioned in the book and it would be a great starting point for a kid who wants to learn about creating their very own secret code.

Make Your Own Ideabook with Arne & Carlos: Create Handmade Art Journals and Bound Keepsakes to Store Inspiration and Memories by Arne Nerjordet

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This book has instructions for how to make very simple scrapbooks or journals. It includes a variety of ideas for how to use the books such as garden journals, records for family tree research.

Mr. Ferris and His Wheel by Kathryn Gibbs Davis

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Dealing with Dragons (Enchanted Forest Chronicles, #1)

Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride by Cary Elwes

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files: Wild Card (gn)

Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files: Wild Card by Jim Butcher

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Beats Up the Marvel Universe by Ryan North

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Apparently, I feel like I've been in a bit of a food rut, hopefully, we are heading into warmer weather and can change things up a bit. I do have some ideas for my next project in the works and plan to be more productive over the next few months. Wish me luck in sticking to that resolution.

The last two week have been a bit crazy, both in terms of busyness and weather. Last week we were having beautiful sunny days, tempatures in the 70's, and flowers starting to bloom everywhere. Then last Monday we had storms roll in complete with high winds, crazy lighting, and tornados in the area. Some parts of town lost power, including my husband's office. I was super worried because I had visited our local library to start the 3D print of our trophy for Pi Day and their internet went out while I was there. The print took 8 hours and I kept my fingers crossed that they wouldn't lose power overnight. (Everything turned out okay and it printed great.) Finally, we woke up on Saturday to find it snowing. Suprisingly enough this is actually pretty typical weather for us durning this time of year so we are well prepared for the sudden changes.

Just to clarify, in reference to the above photos, tornado warnings aren't something to be thankful for but they are a sign of the coming spring and I am definitly looking forward to some warmer weather. As long as it stays nice out, I can let Gil play in the backyard while I sew or work on other crafts without worrying about him grabing things he shouldn't have or feeling gulity about keeping him in his kennel.

As far as the busyness these past weeks, we started out with 3D printing our party favors the weekend of the 26th. Unlike other years where each person got their own glass, this years favors were one per household so we didn't need nearly as many, thank goodness. We were also printing favors on March 5th during the library's Stay Home and Read a Book Ball. I ended up forgetting to share it at the time but I did snap this photo while reading with the cat before heading out for lunch and our printing appointment.

Then there was a bunch of shopping and general party preparations, including getting the house cleaned up. Our house never looks as good as it does right before a party, its enought to make me think we need to have them more regulaly just to help keep things from getting cluttered up again. Then there was also the overnight printing for the trophy, plus sanding it a bit to smooth things out and painting.

Our third annual Pi Day was a success, even though I was decorating cookies right up to the start time and we had a cookie set that didn't get made at all. We made Pi sugar cookies and had planned to make some coconut cutout cookies using a d20 cookie we also 3D printed.

Favors and the trophy, dubbed the Irrational award, were on display as guests entered, along with paper and pens for guest book notes that I plan to add to a scrapbook page about the event soon.

We had a vast array of drinks including Health and Mana Potion Punch. For anyone who's curious they are really easy. The health potion was a jug of berry blend juice, and one bottle each of lemon and lime flavored sparkling water. The mana potion had a bottle of coconut sparkling water (really suprised actually at how much coconut flavor it had), a large can of pineapple juice, and a 2 liter bottle of blue raspberry Fanta. (Altough I did add a bit of blue food coloring to make it bluer, it would have been alright without it, just a greenish aqua blue.)

We had pizza and breadsticks delivered to go with the cookies and pretzel bites that we'd made. This was supplemented by other foods provided by guests.

We had several games set out but the star of the show was Superfight. It's the game that we used to determine who would become Pi Day Champion and win the Irrational Award. Here are some of our more memorable matches.

This one got a bit blurry but its Darth Vader with two extra arms and is a horder vs a swarm of killer bees that are radioactive and use the force.

We didn't play this exactly according to rules because instead of seeing who was left standing at the end, we kept score of how many rounds each fighter lasted. The idea was that way if people wanted to drop in and out of the game they could still be equally in the running. We hadn't started with a concrete plan of how long we were going to play but decide mid-way to play first to 10 rounds wins. Everyone played the entire time, about two hours, and had a great time.

Our winner for the evening received the trohpy and a $10 gift card to Village Inn to stop by for pie.

Everyone left with their own Pi cookie cutter as a party favor.

We actually let the cats and dog stay out for much of the party, which is an unusual thing for us. Everyone went to private rooms during the main pizza eating but were free for much of the rest. There were only a few instances of needed to scare a cat away from the table to prevent spilled cookies and Gil did minimum jumping up on guests. He did crowd his way on the couch to attempt to give puppy kisses quite a bit. Overall though I was pleased with how well behaved they all were.