Read 'Em and Eat - March 2010

Thankfully, this time that I hosted book club, I didn't end up vomiting like the last time I hosted (an unfortunate low-blood sugar/headache/headache medicine on an empty stomach combination...).  Everything went very well, if I do say so, but I have low standards after last time!

We read The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley, and everyone seemed to enjoy the book!  Not too fluffy like some we've read, and not too complicated or boring or depressing like others (hello, I'm speaking to you, Atonement).

So, my plan for dinner was to make sort of old fashioned recipes, since the book took place in the 1950's.  I made that ubiquitous salad of butter lettuces, mandarin oranges, blue cheese, and candied almonds, and I grilled a flat-iron steak and sliced it on top.  It was deeeeelicious!  I *love* that salad!  For dessert, I made (again, the ubiquitous) Nabisco Famous Chocoate Wafer refrigerator cake.  More deliciousness.  I also had a pie with a slice missing as a reference to our book.  I intended it as sort of a decoration, but people wanted to eat it!  Who am I to keep a dear friend away from Key Lime Pie?  If you've read the book, yes, I *do* know it was a custard pie, but I wasn't going to try to bake for this.  I had to go with what was available in the freezer section!

My favorite part was our party favors:  I found the cutest black iron birds in the Smith & Hawken aisle at Target, and used them as placecards.  If you've read the book, or even looked on the cover, for that matter, you know the thing about the bird with something stuck through its beak.  I stuck a faux stamp with each member's name on it through the iron beaks.  It was cuter than it sounds, I think.  But I had to lay the birds down like they were dead like in the book.  Here's how it looked:

I was excited about it.  It's the little things, you know?  Oh well, I feel like a big goober/Martha Stewart wannabe, but I guess I should own it, right?

So next book club is at Katherine's, and we're supposed to read The Scarlet Letter.  I'm interested in seeing it through my older eyes, and in this modern context of political and sports figure adultery.  You know who you are...

Book Club

I'm *so* excited about my upcoming Book Club meeting - we call ourselves Read 'Em and Eat for a reason.  We eat first, then discuss the book.  The the host makes a meal that somehow associates with the book (if possible) and sends each member home with a party favor to commemorate the occasion.

This month, we read The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  The heroine, Flavia, is just the sort of girl I wish I would've been.

Anyway, I have a neat plan for part of our menu, and for the party favors. 

Stay tuned...

Lego Birthday Party Invitation

I have not been feeling super-creative lately, mostly because I've been in a whirlwind of painting in my house!  We hit up the big Labor Day paint rebate-a-thon at Lowe's and I've been using all the paint we bought.  So I've painted my old craft room (good bye argyle wall!) so my husband can use it as his office (hello Man Tan!), both boys' bathrooms (they're now Cosmic Lime, and yes, it's exactly as green as it sounds), and our Master Bath a nice, soothing yellow.  Ahhh.  But with all this work I worry that all my good creativity is behind me, thus this blast from the past:

Ian's Lego Birthday Party invitation.  I was super proud of this, and it was SO easy.  I usually end up mired down in some serious paper-crafting for the boys party invitations but this may be my easiest invitation ever!

Here it is:

I even got all poetic - if you can't read the small print, it says,

"Birthday cake, ice cream, and Lego bricks,
Ian (last name) is turning SIX!

Build the coolest house, the biggest tower,
the fastest car on wheels.
The party will be GREAT
as long as YOU are part of the deal.

Sunday, April 19th at 3 o'clock
That's when you should arrive.
In case you don't already know,
we're at (blankety blank blank) Drive!"

This thing was SO easy.  The boys and I just found all the brown and white legos we could, made candles out of some lego flames we happened to have (what kit did THAT come from - Harry Potter castle maybe?), and threw the piece of cake on Ian's special birthday plate - along with a cool Lego fork that Daddy made! and took a picture of the whole thing!  Adding the invite wording is easy.  Off to Costco to print 5 x 7's and you're in business for something like 79 cents an invite!

It was a fun party.  Lego cake was involved, but the icing didn't turn out quite vivid enough...it tasted good, though!!

Hey, I really appreciate teachers!

My dear friend Kristy called me one day and said "Hey! I volunteered you for a committee at school! You'll be great at it."  As a card-carrying wallflower, on-the-fringe, type of girl, I was a LITTLE perturbed, but secretly thankful to her for making me get out and meet new people. So the volunteer job was to help out with the Staff Appreciation Committee for the new elementary school we've been redistricted to.

I was *so* nervous about the first test of me and this committee, because my cohort, Jenna, was going to be out of town for the annual Back to School Luncheon.  Yikes!  I didn't have any prior knowledge of the school, where things are, anything like that BUT I wanted to 1) let the teachers and staff know how much we appreciate them and 2) make a good impression! 

After the menu/catering was settled (Qdoba is the BEST! They include everything - even a little book of Qdoba matches to light the sterno cans they include!) I fixated on decorations.  I was working with an extremely limited budget, and wanted any decorations to be reusable and school themed.  Between the inspiration from my friend Kristy (yes, the same Kristy), who is the go-to diaper cake maker in our crowd, and Party Planning Mom, I ended up making a School Supply "Cake"!

I'm really proud of how it turned out.  We gave it away as a door prize to one of the teachers at the luncheon.

School supplies were crazy cheap at this time of year, and I was sure to use things that were on the supply lists for most grades at the school.  There are Hardback Composition Books (we call them cow books here), lots of 24-count boxes of crayons, 2-packs of glue sticks, spiral notebooks, sticky notes, and rulers.  There's even a structural part that also comes in handy at school - a roll of paper towels!

It was an exercise in desperation and recycling, to be sure...there are all sorts of things in the middle of it to help hold it up.  And those ribbons aren't just there for show!  They are pretty much the only thing (besides gravity) holding it together!  The teachers loved it, and I hope it served as the symbol of our appreciation of the staff that I wanted it to.

If you use my idea as inspiration, THANK YOU!  Please mention you saw it here!