It was my turn to host my Bunco group last month. I decided that Girls Rock would be my theme this time, a celebration of all things girly. Since I’m particularly passionate about the power of women, this motif seemed not only fun but fitting.
I arranged thirteen vases of flowers of varying style and size for this affair.
I, along with my helpful assistant Jason, made fresh-squeezed lemonade, various types of cookies, phyllo-wrapped asparagus and a classy cheese platter for this event. These freshly prepared treats were supplemented with delicious cake bites from The Sweet Tooth Fairy. I made sure all the victuals were presented with the frills and fanciness that the theme demanded.
I decorated red velvet cookies with swirls of cream cheese frosting, dusting sugar and pansies made out of icing.
All the ladies went home with a vase of flowers.
But sugar-crusted sweets and mint-garnished drinks weren’t enough in themselves to create a woman wonderland. I built a playlist with all the girly standards from Alanis Morissette to Avril Lavigne, plus a few of my offbeat personal favorites, so my halls could be filled with the sounds of rockin’ femininity.
This was just one of the many bouquets I put together.
I also decided to cover my house with bouquets of flowers, as if the girly refreshments and racquet weren’t enough. Floral arranging is a hobby of mine so I may have taken this portion of my plan a bit overboard. I packed thirteen vases with a variety of blooms and let my guests each pick one to take home with them.
I made sure the spread didn’t disappoint on the girly scale.
Bunco was stuffed with ruffles, blossoms and pinkness. And, more importantly, it was filled with the laughter of intelligent ladies exchanging ideas and enjoying each other’s company, which speaks more to the success of the evening than any overabundance of cheese or flowering vegetation ever could.
Jason and I just held our annual Halloween bash. As always, it was a tremendous undertaking. The planning for this event usually begins sometime in August and escalates as it approaches. Thinking of putting on a Halloween shindig of your own? May our terrifying process convince you that that would only be lunacy. Every year is a little different but here are the 26 steps that were required to produce and recover from our festivities this time:
1. Create and order invites. 2. Buy prizes for the costume contest, bingo and various other games with all ages considered. 3. Order costume contest medals.
Jason and I went steampunk this year.
4. Buy fabric and sew costumes. One sentence doesn’t seem adequate to represent the work involved in this. Good thing I just made it three. 5. Tag and decorate 48 bottles of butterscotch beer as party favors for the adults. 6. Buy a piñata and its fillings. Stuff it. 7. Arrange for food. This year’s sustenance came in the form of catering from Waffle Love. They brought their delicious waffles, and waffle truck, to us.
I don’t even want to acknowledge how long it took me to tag and decorate these 48 party favors.
Silas dressed as a possessed doll and played the part quite creepily.
8. Buy supplies for the kids’ craft table. 9. Build a custom playlist with all those Halloween favorites and some lesser-known creepy beats. 10. Buy kiddie goodie-bags plus an assortment of innards and cram them all in. This year we put together almost 40 of these bags and all but a few were given out. 11. Address and mail invites.
What a darling family.
12. Gussy up costume contest prizes with ribbons, feathers, eyeballs and anything else bumpy in the night. 13. Prep craft table by constructing examples of all the finished products so that the little folk will know what they’re trying to make. 14. Go to a patch and handpick pumpkins. Paint these pumpkins black and white so guests can decorate them with chalk and decals. All this jack-o business took way too long so don’t expect it to happen again next year.
Never underestimate the eeriness the right lighting can add to a scene.
Eden took undead to the animals with her zombie cat costume.
15. Create costume contest ballots. 16. Buy utensils, plates, napkins, drinks and all those other eating niceties. 17. Move couches, rugs, kitchen appliances, pictures, etc. upstairs or into the garage, anywhere they are out of the way.
Drew and Simone came as Dr. Who?
18. Vacuum, dust and straighten the basement. Everything has to be tucked away somewhere to make room for the people explosion that’s about to occur. 19. Decorate, decorate, decorate, decorate, decorate, decorate, decorate, decorate, decorate, decorate, and decorate. I feel like I should say “decorate” a few dozen more times because decorating is a monster of a job. We meticulously arrange creepy cloth, candlesticks, bones, potion bottles, pumpkins, lights, ravens and so forth throughout our yard and two floors of our home. Every year we display our extensive Halloween collection differently and every year gallons of creative juices get consumed in the process.
These serving-dish fingers may be proof of a twisted mind…mine.
This graveyard scene was my design.
20. Arrange studio lights and a background to form a makeshift photo spot. I didn’t have a clue how to work and situate studio lights before this little experiment. It took some messing around and research to figure it out. 21. Rent space heaters so that the backyard can be a toasty hangout location.
Thirty-one feet of ruffles were squished into the back of this skirt.
22. Clean. Everything has to be spick ‘n span before it’s thrown into chaos. It’s a lot like nursing a patient back to health before serving out their death sentence. 23. Throw party!
Waffle Love catered our party via their food truck.
Penny’s no garden-variety gnome.
24. Clean up the raspberries smashed into the sidewalk, the sticky goo left on the kitchen floor, the blob of who-knows-what dripped on the carpet. Cleanup is lengthy and not especially fun. 25. Put relocated furnishings back where they came from. 26. Pack away the dozens of boxes of Halloween décor so that they are ready for the vicious cycle to begin all over again next year. (This step has not yet been completed and will still take us weeks.)
Bart and Brandi cleverly used a bulging belly to their advantage and came as Juno and Bleeker.
Too many steps for you to follow? Not to worry, you can come to the Sabin party and enjoy all the fun and fright without rattling your work bones. So why do we do it? The obvious answer is that we are crazy but, besides that, we love Halloween and conjuring the spooky magic of the season up for the wee ones. We also enjoy reminding adults that costumes aren’t just for kids.
I made sure this jar was crawling with centipedes. The gruesome details are never overlooked by yours truly.
This year we had considerably more help pulling this madness off than we’ve had in the past. Many thanks to Lee and Jacob for lending us a hand with basement prep one evening. Keith, thanks for the pickup service. A big thank you to Drew, Adam, Jacob and Lee for helping the kids bowl and Jenny and Simone for assisting with some of the other games. And muchas gracias to the various people that collected many of the cups and craft fragments scattered throughout our house: Abigail, Simone, Drew, Adam and Jeremy. Since Jason and I are a tiny team, any bit of assistance from others goes a long way. Maybe we aren’t quite mad yet…
Great Basin, one of America’s newest national parks, is only a few hours from our home yet Jason and I had never been there and that was just not right! I therefore planned a weekend of camping, caving and climbing in that remote region to remedy this wrong. (Yes, I somehow became the camping event organizer again. Next time it’s definitely someone else’s turn.)
It’s too bad that Drew and Isabelle didn’t make it to Stella Lake because they missed the grandeur of rocky mountaintops multiplied in unspoiled pools.
The kids cooperated for a few cute pictures along the lakeshore.
Great Basin turned out to be great indeed. It possesses a tougher kind of beauty; not the pristine forested prettiness that you’d expect from a national park but a hardier, rugged, determined sort of splendor. Within its borders, the sharp peaks of the South Snake Range burst from the surrounding sea of desert valleys with an almost 8,000-foot elevation change and, although much lusher than the arid lands from which they rise, these crests and summits show signs of a lasting struggle with their harsh environment. Dried browns and thirsty yellows mix with verdant greens on their hillsides creating a unique resolute landscape.
Stella Lake, one of the subalpine pools we looped around, was a transparent emerald hue.
The kids found the chilly waters of Stella Lake warm enough for some toe dipping and rock skipping.
Thanks to my expert planning skills, I was able to procure our company, which consisted of my brother Drew’s family and the Bresees, a secluded group campsite. Although there was a little drama over another traveler taking our reserved spot, it all ended well. We had enough room and isolation to be as loud as we wanted.
Our campsite was well secluded so “quiet hours” weren’t necessary but they were nice.
Lehman Caves, with its vast chambers of dripping limestone and marble, was a great grotto.
Since we had little kids with us, we did but miniscule hiking collectively during our stay. We did all manage to hit the Alpine Lakes Loop Trail, a short 2.7 mile circle, but Drew and Isabelle didn’t manage to hit it far. The rest of us, however, enjoyed refreshing waters in the form of two crystal clear subalpine lakes, a little hail and some torrential rain as we walked. Did I mention that the weather in Great Basin is often unpredictable, especially in the afternoons? That becomes important in the second half of this story so don’t forget it.
I brought my new camera to Great Basin and took practically innumerable pictures.
This is what I was shooting when Jason took the picture of me above.
Next, we were off on a ranger-led tour of the Lehman Caves, Great Basin’s claim to fame. Although not terribly impressive size-wise, the Lehman Caves (really just one cave) showcases many rare decorations, including cave shields, which look like two circular plates cemented down the middle, and bulbous stalactites. This intriguing cavern prompted many questions from me, which our good-natured guide kindly answered.
The harsher their environment, the longer bristlecone pines survive. One could say that they thrive in adversity. That’s my kind of tree.
The twisted gnarled wood of the bristlecone pines was texturally and visually absorbing.
After our descent into the ground, the kids were too beat for the second hike we had planned but that didn’t stop Jason and me from trekking it on our own. We took the Bristlecone Pine Trail to a grove of the earth’s oldest living creatures. The mountain hillsides covered in these ancient plants were fantastic. These resourceful stubborn trees live not centuries but millennia and, even at the end of their lifespan, they refuse to give up. “Dying” can take centuries and their twisted stone-like corpses still stand for thousands of years once the last of life has left their dense trunks. After beholding the majesty of such resolve, Jason and I continued up the trail to observe a different kind of perseverance in the form of a rock glacier, Nevada’s last remnant of a colder age. Though small, the immense impact this glacier has had on the steep gravelly valley that cradles it was obvious.
The grove of bristlecone pines that we walked through was ancient. The longevity of our surroundings made my own fleeting moments of life seem insignificant. It’s good to be reminded of your own unimportance now and then.
That night, when Jason and I returned to camp following our hike, the whole gang roasted hotdogs and marshmallows and chitchatted around the fire until rain broke up our party. The boys, not ready to retire, revived the flames and conversations several times when they thought the deluge had passed but, in the end, the persistent precipitation got the better of them. Although pelting showers woke everyone numerous times during the night, by morning the eager desert had soaked up all remnants of the storm as if it had never happened.
The craggy outcroppings surrounding the glacier may have been barren but they were enthralling nonetheless.
The glacier was at its smallest size of the year when we saw it but sheer sheets of ice camouflaged under dirty rubble could still be seen by the careful eye.
And that brings me to the last day of our outing, the day Jason and I hiked the 13,063-foot summit of Wheeler Peak and got in a battle with Mother Nature that we will not soon forget. Next week I will cover that thrilling tale, which you surely will not soon forget either.
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