I Turned 30 and Gave a Lumberjack Party

Totally normal, right?

Well, the lumberjack party was for Jess whose birthday is the day after mine. 

The night before, Josh and I went to see Othello at Portland Center Stage as a gift from my parents.  I always get excited about a PCS show, not in small part because of their sets.  This one was definitely up to their high standards.  And can we talk about the actress who played Emilia?  Because she made those old, marvelous words come alive!  She stole the show for me!

Anyhow, I was glad that the birthday party was in the afternoon, because after a late night (I am 30 now, after all, and being on the train at 11:30 constitutes a "late night"), I needed the morning to finish the cooking and arranging.

I made the invitations from paper and fabric scraps we had from other projects.  We got a great response from family and friends.  I was excited to see 30 people join us to celebrate!

We set two long tables out in the backyard.  I made a burlap table runner like this last fall, so that came out along with some fabric bunting to adorn the tables.  I set the food on log rounds to add dimension.  I tried to think of lumberjack-y fare, so we had a big pot of chili and some freshly smoked corn on the cob.  I didn't get to take any pictures of the food until after the party was over, but the chili looked like chili and the corn looked like corn.

 

We had chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting with chocolate shavings on top that made me think of sawdust.  We had a dutch oven full of candied pecans.  We had mustache and tree shaped gingersnaps and sweet tea that we drank from mason jars.

 

Jess ate his cake oh-so-carefully, as we suspected he would.

 

 

Finger by finger, he ate that cake.  He took so long that the party moved on without him, as you can see!

 

When he finally finished, we moved inside to cool off and open gifts.  People were so generous, and Jess is having so much fun with his new toys.

 



The whole thing was simple to do, and largely free.  We let the trees and pond be the décor and used fabric and wood that we already had otherwise.  The only cost was the food, which took us another 10 days to finish eating! 

 

It doesn't seem like a year has gone by.  This kid.  Those eyes.  My goodness.



Oh, Hello

Hmm, let's see.  Things I've done since last July...  We took 3 month old Jess on a hiking vacation to Colorado and New Mexico.  We bought a house in Boring, Oregon.  We named the house Hoquarton. We invited some friends to move into the basement and put a kitchen down there so they have their own apartment.  Josh started at a private practice.  And I made exactly one quilt.

It was supposed to be a Christmas present, but we just got it in the mail last week.  Oops!  My excuses are as follows:
1.  I was still the gift processor for the Red Cross, a job I supposedly left almost a year ago.  But as I am still on the payroll and the need remained, they would drive the gifts out to me in Boring so I could work from home with the baby.  As you can imagine, the holidays and year-end are an incredibly busy giving season!  I did train someone to take over in January, which has been a relief.
2.  We were building that kitchen.
3.  I really did sew other Christmas presents that arrived in a much more timely manner!

See!  There's a purse, two skirts, a fabric-scrap book about colors, a homemade memory game, and a little crocheted hat for our nieces!

Enough with the excuses!  Here is the quilt I made for Josh's mom:

She loves Taos, New Mexico, which was part of our summer trip with the baby.  I was inspired by that to make a sampler of sorts.  Each block design appears twice in varying colors.  It was interesting how much that changed the look of some of them.  Here are a couple of my favorite blocks:

And here is my cute little helper who was quite sure that we went out to the deck to pictures of him.