The Eclectic Otter: Pi Day 2017

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.