Hosting Book Club

This post will never go viral. It will never get 2,025 page views like my Frobscottle recipe (which I didn't even invent). No one cares this much about this book and there has probably ever only been like one party in the past based on it and there will probably be only ever one or two more in the future. But regardless, I'm posting my Book Club themed cocktail, snacks and decorations from our last book, The Chrysalids by John Wyndham for, you know, those one or two future parties looking for ideas.

In this case, it's très important NOT to judge a book by its cover.

It was my first time to host, and while I will never be able to host as magnificently as Kate hosts, I wanted to do something a little more special than just mopping my kitchen floors and wiping down toilets. (You're welcome.) Then I found this inspiring cross-stitch on Etsy and an idea was born.


Which I did not buy. But I did decide it looked easy enough for me to attempt, so I did.

Minus the strand of DNA... #cuttingcorners

In the book, our protagonist, David Strorm, lives in a house decorated adorned with signs everywhere of verses from Nicholson's Repentances, the book the Labrador people used alongside the Bible as Scripture. Verses such as the one above - WATCH THOU FOR THE MUTANT - warned people that all deviations, no matter how small, were still blasphemies against God and were not human. An extra toe or unusual body hair is all it took to prove you were a child of the Devil and nonhuman and were to be thrust out of society and rendered infertile so as not to procreate. If you were a baby, you'd be left near the Fringes and left to your own devices. Maybe a Fringes person would rescue you; maybe not.

It's a really uplifting book.

So the only real way to decorate was with these signs. (I did toy with the idea of sewing brown crosses on fronts of every woman's shirt as she walked through the door, but the logistics....) I printed off eight different signs and framed them with Dollar Tree frames, and hung them around the house, along with my cross-stitching and all my chalkboards with verses scrawled on them.




We also sort of had a theme for foods - foods that were a little "deviant" or a something not quite right. Like Elizabeth's maple bacon cookies....

I wanted to try this blue Muddy Buddies recipe that I found on Pinterest, because blue food just isn't right. I think I can go so far as to say, however, it was a definite Pinterest fail. Or perhaps the whole thing is just a massive Photoshop pantone conspiracy, because there was no way this could have turned out as blue as the recipe made it look. I was going to call this "Deep Blue Sea-landers" after the Sealand people, but since it didn't turn out very deep blue, I just didn't name it at all.

Pinterest

Reality

It tasted good though.

Yet my crowning personal achievement of the evening, in my own ever-so-humble opinion, was my very own cocktail created just for the party called The Badlands (somewhat based on this lemon licorice cocktail recipe). And this is the part that will never go viral because no one will ever care about an obscure cocktail inspired by a random reference in a semi-known science fiction novel from the 1950s.

The cocktail was super tasty though, and I'm pretty sure everyone enjoyed them, along with all the other delicious foods and drinks the ladies brought over (jello shots, anyone?), and we also enjoyed a good chinwag about the book itself. Ya'll, this a book club that actually talks about the books. I love it.

So here's how to concoct The Badlands. You could make it for any occasion in which a black drink would be appropriate. (Halloween? Funeral?)


There are three parts to this recipe. Two of which need to be made in advance.

The Badlands

A Black Gin Cocktail

Prep Time - 3-4 hours

Ingredients

Blackberry Ice Cubes

6 oz fresh blackberries

1/2 cup of sugar and 1 cup of water OR

1 cup blackberry juice

black food coloring (optional)

Basil-Lime Syrup

2 limes

2 cups sugar

2 cups water

1 basil leaf

Cocktail

4 oz gin (I recommend Bombay Sapphire but any will do)

2 oz of Basil-Lime Syrup

2 tsp fresh lime juice

2 Blackberry Ice Cubes

Tonic water

Start with the Blackberry Ice Cubes, since obviously these need the longest prep time to freeze. Puree blackberries and sugar/water or blackberry juice in a blender. If you are trying to make it more black than reddish-purple, include black food coloring. After blending, strain out seeds with a strainer. (This took a lot longer than I expected, because there were a LOT of seeds. It's an important step though, because you don't want seeds to ruin your drinking experience.) Spoon strained blackberry juice into ice cube trays and freeze.

(You could avoid this step by using just plain blackberry juice frozen into cubes, and I'm sure it would still be very tasty.)

Next, make your Basil-Lime Syrup. Peel or zest just the green off the skin of the limes, leaving the bitter white pith underneath. (If you don't have a zester, I highly recommend getting one - they make such a difference to so many recipes! And hey, you can even buy one from me!) Set limes aside. Combine zest or peels with sugar, water and basil leaf in a small saucepan and heat until sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat, and once cool, strain the syrup. In a separate bowl or cup, juice your two limes. Chill both the syrup and the lime juice separately in refrigerator for later.

Once ice cubes are frozen, you can make your cocktail!

In cocktail shaker, gently shake gin, syrup, lime juice and 2 berry cubes. Pour into two glasses, giving each glass one of the half-melted cubes left in the cocktail shaker and complete drink with a splash of tonic water. (Tonic water will supposedly glow under a black light because of the quinine, but with all the berry juice in this drink, I'm not sure if this drink will glow or not. But legend does say that sometimes the black coasts of the Badlands glowed dimly in the dark....) Drink and enjoy, while thinking of all the poor Old People who were destroyed in the Tribulation, leaving nothing but large continents of wildly mutated vegetation surrounded by black, glassy, radioactive coasts in their place. Ahh, sucks to be them.

Next month, we're reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.  HeLa Cells on the rocks, anyone?

The Day of Love

I see no reason to hide the truth: I love Valentine's Day. It may be my favorite holiday after Thanksgiving. It probably ties with Christmas. I just think it's fun. Red and pink and hearts and sweets and roses.. swoon.

I usually make a big deal out of it.

So on Wednesday, for Jaguar's little weekly toddler class, I started the week of love by making heart shaped red velvet cupcakes to share with all the kiddos and mommies.


A little foil rolled into a ball and placed inside the Pampered Chef Brownie Pan makes cute little heart shapes!


Off topic for a second: Jaguar loves his Busy Bees class, but it drives me crazy. I mean, it's not the class that drives me crazy; the class is great with great parents and a great instructor with great activities. But Baby Jaguar doesn't follow those great instructions. Instead, he spends the entire hour running around, not doing what the others are doing, destroying the obstacle courses and games the teacher has set up, and trying to escape out the back door into the parking lot. I spend the entire time trying to convince him to join in or at least try not destroy the equipment or run away from my sight. I expend more energy at this class than he does. But he loves it!

Okay, so back on topic. The kids all had fun at their party, trying to understand what the Valentine card exchange was all about (ten toddlers aimlessly wandering around trying to hand cards to equally uncertain toddlers) and getting red cupcake all over the place. I tried to get some photos of Jaguar at the party, but this is the best I could get. The rest were even blurrier. He's fast.


Fifi and Lolly had their Valentine parties at school. Lolly's class made their mailboxes in class, so we only had one to create at home. After last year, when Fi created her very own totally-hers mailbox that didn't win any prizes (and made her sad), I gave her permission to search Pinterest this year for ideas. She wanted to do something Harry Potter for her mailbox and we came across this little gem of an idea.


The Monster Book of Monsters. Easy to make and really cute. She won "Most Creative" in her class. Which feels kind of like a cheat since we found the idea on Pinterest so "creative" might be kind of a misnomer. But she was happy, and it was a pretty cool idea!




So then, Friday morning (our pre-Valentine's Day), the kids woke up to a special surprise.


A special visit from our Elf on the Shelf, Banoffee Pie! Lolly and Fifi gasped with surprise and Jaguar cried out, "Pie!!" when they woke up and found him. Banoffee brought the kids some new Valentine's plates, bowls and cups (that he cleverly purchased last year in the post-Valentine's sale at Kroger for 500% off) and a plate full of pink chocolate chip cookies. He was kind enough to leave the remaining cookie dough in the fridge for Scott and I.


(You know this spatula is about to be discontinued at the end of the month, so if you want one, go get it now... wink!)


This image pleases me.


I intended to make heart-shaped pink pancakes for breakfast like last year, but my pancakes turned out a bit of a disaster. Since Scott was crowned Pancake King in our home, Bisquick just doesn't satisfy anymore. Not even pink Bisquick that ended up not being heart-shaped but had heart-shaped strawberries. I, however, thoroughly enjoyed my pink pancakes with chocolate chips. (You will notice a Valentine's trend growing here that is decidedly not keto-friendly.)



Now, MY plan for Valentine's Day was to start out by going to my favorite gym class, Cardio Dance Party, and dancing my heart out (so many puns! Well, a couple.) in my new black tank top with red lips bought specifically for that class, my red heart socks, all my heart-shaped jewelry and a Valentinesy headband that I'd made the night before with the leftovers from the fabric bookmarks I'd made for the girls' teachers. But at 7:30am, work called and asked if I could come in to cover for someone. Sigh. So I missed my dance class, which makes that the third Cardio Dance Party holiday class I've missed in a row... Halloween... Christmas... now Valentine's. But hey, extra money!


Bookmarks to show my appreciation for wonderful teachers!

Oh and I was wearing my hair in what I hoped would look like hearts but ended up looking more like cinnamon rolls.


(Can you see the headband?)

Lolly's and Fi's hair looked much more convincing and a lot less like breakfast food.



I also planned to do the grocery shopping and errand running on Friday, but after we came home from work, wee Jaguar came down with a high-ish fever, relegating the rest of the day to the couch for cuddling and sleeping and trying to drink water (Jaguar, that is). Which means I didn't have time or energy to get dolled up for my date with Scott that night, but hey ho, I was wearing my lips tank! And I got to snuggle with my hot water bottle baby boy who never wants to snuggle anymore. The only silver lining to having a sick child.


I took the children to my mom's house for a sleepover after they came home from school. My mom and stepdad rock, by the way, for taking Baby Jaguar even with his fever, which, I should add so I don't look like a terrible mother, had no other symptoms at all. David set him up with popsicles, water, blankets and cuddles all night while Mom organized a Valentine's fun night for the girls, so Scott and I could go out and have a super sweet date night!


...at Painting With a Twist!!




Let me tell you, that was SO MUCH FUN. Scott is a self-proclaimed art dunce, but he's wrong, his painting came out looking great. They take you step by step through how to make your painting, making it very difficult to screw up. We had so much fun, and Scott even said he'd go back again. Success!

We then used our Olive Garden gift card from Christmas to gorge ourselves on salad and breadsticks and wine. We even shared a white chocolate raspberry cheesecake at the end. Then rolled ourselves into the car to go home. I could barely move. Carbs. It was a perfect date night.

A quick skip over the next several hours to this morning (wink) and after a leisurely lie-in with no kids rapping at our door (though we did have two cats who weren't happy about waiting for breakfast) Scott and I treated ourselves to a super romantic, child-free breakfast at Waffle House (that's where the magic happens, right?) before arriving for our super romantic appointment with our tax preparer. Nothing says Happy Valentine's Day like a double waffle and a 1040! Throw in some hashbrowns and a Schedule C, and things really start cookin'! Ya'll know what I'm saying.

But seriously. Happy days.

Sigh, Valentine's Day, you blessed day of commercialized, Hallmark-cheapened love, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

Glow

Party Pictures on Flickr
Back when I had this...

Fifi's 1st Birthday

... I could not imagine ending up with this.

Fi's 8th Birthday

When Fifi was little, she was pink and princessy, girly and giggly, cheeky and chubby. Now, here she is, an eight year old who reads 500 page books, loves science and history, and wants to be an American ambassador to Japan before pursuing the White House as President of the United States. An eight year old who squealed with delight over receiving a book about Martin Luther King, Jr for her birthday. An eight year old who has the confidence to dance her own routines at a Zumba party.


An eight year old whose heart is so selfless that she told people they didn't need to bring a present to her party, she just wanted them to be there. An eight year old who is already smarter than I am. I am so proud of the young woman my daughter is becoming. She is amazing!

Some days, I forget to see who this girl is inside. As she approaches adolescence more quickly than I'd like, I see those sparks of teenage attitude flicker up when she fights with her sister or bosses her around or smarts off to me with hands on hips and eyes rolled. I get weary and fed up with the near-teen behavior and sometimes lose sight of who the real person is inside. The girl who will do anything for anyone. The girl who loves and protects her brother and sister ferociously. The girl who thinks deeper thoughts than any child I've ever met, and who is not afraid to come to different conclusions and hold differing beliefs to both her friends and her parents, as long as she is true to herself. This girl is selfless, intelligent, mature, confident, independent and driven. It's easy to forget all of that when she is acting like, well, a child. Because when a child is as mature of Fi is, we adults sometimes forget at times to remember that she is, actually, still a kid. And kids are allowed to be imperfect sometimes! I'm glad that amongst all the books, diaries, and science kits she received for her birthday she also received a doll. It's good to be a kid while you can, baby. I know the path to the Presidency is hard and requires a lot of serious study, but playing with dolls is a wonderful pastime!

Today at her Zumba Glow Party, as I watched how well she gets along with her peers, how thoughtful she was of every child who walked through the door, making sure they all had glow bracelets and their glow party favor, and how genuinely grateful and gracious she was to each person who brought her a gift, I remembered very well just what an amazing kid my daughter is. What a shining light! (How appropriate that you had a Glow party!)

Happy birthday, Fifi-bear. Each day you grow more and more beautiful, inside and out. You make your mum and dad so incredibly proud. We are stunned by the fact that though we made you, you are your own unique person who impresses and astonishes us constantly with your awesomeness. Though we'd like to take a little bit of credit for how awesome you are, we know that really, it's all you, babe. Your awesomeness is all you.

Lolly's 6th Birthday Frozen Party

Yesterday my little Lolly Bolly turned six. SIX. My little cheeky monkey turned SIX.

This kid.


This kid.


This kid.




Happy birthday, crazy girl.


She had her birthday party last weekend. She wanted a Frozen party, of course. We wanted to have it in the gym hall where I work so they could have a bouncy house, but there were basketball games scheduled for that day. I booked it for the fitness room instead where we do classes. When I told Lolly we'd have it in the room where I do Zumba, she asked "Are we doing Zumba at my party?!" Hmmm, I thought. I suppose we could! So we planned a Frozen Zumba party.

I spent weeks beforehand on Pinterest getting ideas. I designed some invitations on Photoshop.


I wanted the theme colors to be all teal/blue and white. Food and everything. After seeing a million cool ideas, I stuck with a general snowflake theme for decor, and for food, I went with white powdered donuts (Lolly's request), popcorn, white covered pretzels, blue jello, Hershey's Hugs, white cheese dip with blue tortilla chips, blue punch (which turned out green, oops) and a bucket full of water bottles ("melted snow" right?). And of course a cake. Chocolate on the inside but with teal "ombre" icing.



I planned some crafts and games too, to entertain them before Zumba. We never got around to the games, but the crafts went well. They made toilet paper roll snowmen and cut snowflakes out of coffee filters.



We were going to play a Do You Want To Build a Snowman? game where the kids teamed up in twos or threes and wrapped one kid up in toilet paper, then finished by putting a scarf and hat on the wrapped up kid. It never happened though, because they were just happy doing their crafts and running around the room like crazy!



The kids had a snack, and then Kristy arrived to do the Zumba class. She was fantastic! She did songs like "What Did the Fox Say?" and the Gummy Bear song. We tried to get the parents to join in with the dancing, but until she got to the last song, the only parents dancing were those of us who go to/teach Zumba anyway!

(For the record, Zumba Kidz isn't the same as Zumba for kids. No twerking for tots. No popping for pre-schoolers.)

The kids loved it!




I've never seen so many Elsas in one room before.

The last song was "Let It Go". For that song, it began to snow. Thank you, Sarah, for letting us borrow your snow machine!!




With the last thirty minutes, we cut the cake and opened presents. Disney make a KILLING off of all the Frozen paraphernalia Lolly received for her birthday!






I toyed with all kinds of ideas for party favors to send home with the kids. I originally considered little bags of Hershey's Hugs with an Olaf tag saying "I like warm hugs!" But then I saw an idea (on Pinterest of course) for making little jars of homemade gak, and I just had to try it. I had a box full of jars in the garage that I've been trying to find a use for for over a year. I figured if I haven't used them yet, I probably never will! So I made fifteen or so jars of teal and purple gak. Scott told me I was an awful woman for sending gak home with other people's kids, and maybe I am! But I can bet the kids loved it. I know my kids did!


The party was so much fun. And as a mother, it was actually pretty stress free! It certainly helps to have a husband who will run back home for you to pick up the things you forgot and a friend to take all the pictures for you. Thank you, Elizabeth, for all these great pictures you took!

One more very happy birthday under my baby girl's belt.




Previous Parties:
1st - Rocking Horse/ Carousel
2nd - Clicky Shoes
3rd - Dora the Explorer
4th - Wizard of Oz
5th - Powerpuff Girls/ Superhero
6th - Frozen