Murder Mystery at the English Inn: Pheonix Protocol

For Christmas, Billy gifted me tickets to a murder mystery interactive theater at the English Inn, and I gifted him a night at the English Inn.  = )

Sadly, my mom was out of town, but Sarah stepped up, to sleep at the house with the kids (and was able to slip away first thing in the morning, since it was a Sunday-Monday night stay, but the kids were out of school for the week.)

I was able to reuse the hat that I bought for my murder mystery birthday party and wear my Grandmother's pearls.  I did buy a special dress (that I've since worn again!)

It was so nice!  The food was fantastic, we were each given a pin and pen to commemorate the event. The actors were soooooooo good.  They rotated through the tables and we were able to interrogate them!

I was so excited! We totally guessed the culprit, but got our sheet in too late, so we weren't the 'top team' but we had so much fun.  In fact, we came home and signed up for the next one, in October!

The October theme is a masquerade!  I'd never been invited to a masquerade before, and picked out a mask on the internet that I *loved* but was waiting to buy it.  However, the next Tuesday, while Emily, Grace and I were at the thrift store, we found a fancy mask for Billy (and it was only $4.50!)

I found a dress that would match the mask that I love and since it was only $10, I didn't feel bad about buying the mask in time for Jessica's birthday party (especially since I know I'll have one more occasion to wear it!)

So many murder mystery events lately have me feeling like I am just living my best life! = )

later days

edit: written 6-16-23 backdated for continuity.

Crafts and Projects

December is always a fun time for crafts and cooking and projects, so here are a few that didn't get their own post. 

I posted the front side of Emily's hat in this post, but not the tricky/scary part of adding the zipper!  It's not super impressive, but it took me about an hour and a half and came out okay.  She has a functional pocket in her hat, which is at least a partial success.

The Helterbrands sent Alice a slew of Pusheen stickers for her Christmas gift.  They are so cute!  I decided to fancy it up just a bit, and sewed some paper pockets on a stiff backing so that they would stay separated a bit, and be easier for her to find.

Alice was invited to Willow's 13th birthday party.  Sadly, the squishimal she picked out online would not arrive on time, so we ended up going to Walmart one day after school (and the first cooking club day) very late, and they only had a few options.  She picked her favorite from their selection.  Since she was a bit disappointed, I offered to make up a fancy box for the stuffie she selected.

The school glue did not work very well with the fancy tissue paper, so I ended up using quite a bit of tape to hold the edges in place.

I think she ended up covering the stuffie with a layer of tissue paper in the end, to make it a bit of a surprise.

Emily chose a butterfly theme for her upcoming birthday party, so we were practicing origami butterflies for her invitations.

Once we mastered it, it was just a matter of folding the printed invitations!  The netting below the butterflies here came out of the free bin at the MSU thrift store.  I thought they looked like butterfly nets, and they were free. ; )

One night I made burgers for dinner.  The little girls thought that was fun, and decided to make up "mutti-donalds."  We didn't have many fries, so everyone was 'forced' to eat apple slices as a side as well.  (In my defense, Aldi was out of fries, and so I was just going to serve chips.)

For MLK day, I decided to try something new and spent about 4 hours making some Biryani.  It was pretty good, but spicey.  The Basmati rice was amazing though.

Emily and Grace came with me to the thrift store and Aldi, since they had the day off of school.  Grace picked out a home popsicle making kit.  We bought some orange juice for her to fill them.  Emily wanted some mini-cupcakes, but she was able to make more full-sized ones from a mix, than it would have cost to buy the little ones.  And Juliet got some pudding mix, because they didn't have cups, so she had to fill our ramekins, but it came out tasty!

My current project is to make Valentine's for my crew out of cutouts from Billy's coke zero boxes.  I don't know quite how they'll look just yet, I'm sure it will depend upon how many I am able to make before Valentine's day arrives.  But I like them so far.

 later days