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.

Hey, what's that you're eating? Can I have some?

Happy Pi Day everyone enjoy your celebrations and whatever nice weather might come your way!

Halloween-iversary

This Saturday was our 9th wedding anniversary. Usually, we do something for our anniversary and Halloween separately but this year we decided to combine the two and have a haunted house dinner party. We love playing Betrayal at the House on the Hill and the expansion was released just a few weeks before our anniversary so it was a perfect excuse to buy it for ourselves.

We were limited in the number of people we invited by the number of players for the game. That allowed me to make the invitations more elaborate because I only had to make a few. I decide to make spell books that had been found in the house with the party information on one of the pages.

I downloaded a printable spell book cover and gray pattern for endpapers. I also did a google image search to find pictures to use as spell pages. The center of the book has all of the details about the party and the front cover has a post-it note connecting it to the imaginary house on the hill.

Our dog Gil grabbed one of them off of the table and chewed up a corner, right before we were going to give them out. I didn't have time to get another one made but luckily it kind of worked with the old book idea. (It also didn't hurt that everyone invited has dogs and would be understanding.)

For dinner, we made spooky tentacle pasta with meat sauce, a simple salad, and breadsticks. The spaghetti is dye by using a bit of gel food coloring in the cooking water.

 

Dessert was turtle brownies and sweet cream ice cream with a delicious blood orange and blackberry sauce that my husband made which turned out a wonderful blood red color.

Our round of Betrayal was great. I headed to the library beforehand to 3D print an organizer for the game pieces. I ended up only having time to print one-half of it but it made everything run a little smoother. It also satisfies that part of me that loves organizing and making rainbows, a nice little rainbow of betrayal.

                         

We ended up being shrunk and trapped in the house with cats trying to eat us. The survivors managed a narrow escape by toy airplane, barely winning the game before being eaten. Wr did lose some people but made it out with barely enough to meet our win conditions

The haunt that we played came from the original game but we enjoyed the new rooms and cards from the Widow's walk expansion. I also liked the addition of the explorer tokens which are used to mark which explorers have taken advantage of 'once per game' room bonuses.

Valentine's Day 2016

We had a nice quiet weekend for Valentine's Day so far. Friday night we ran some errands so we'd have more free time. Also my husband brought me a very pretty blue rose. Then Saturday we slept late then spent the afternoon hanging out with friends. It was the weekend of my husband's Pathfinder game but they had a session that was mostly downtime so I tagged along. Because I usually have to work Saturdays it gave me a chance to see some people I don't get to hang out with very often so it was nice.

For Valentine's Day itself we stayed in and had a Buffy the Vampire Slayer marathon on Netflix and a delicious homemade fondue dinner. We made the fondue with aged white cheddar and gouda with Red's Green Apple Ale for the liquid. For dipping we sliced up some smoked sausage and apple.

We also had broccoli (blanched just a bit so it was easier to skewer) and pretzel bites that we made using this recipe. It's the same pretzels we made for Pi day last year and they are fantastic!

Everything turned out great and was a wonderful match with the cheddar flavor.

We both have tomorrow off as well and do have a few plans. Mostly we have plans to visit the library and make a tasty turkey for our Monday game night group. There will also be some requisite cleaning and work on our Pi day ideas.