Ye Old Swashbuckler Soiree!

The weekend of my big summer party always means a house full of friends and family.  Mostly, Chloe, Gavin and Sophia’s friends who’d rather stay with Momma Jill and Papa Dave than in a hotel! And while I used to dread having houseguests the day before a party because I worried about keeping them entertained and feeding them, cleaning up after them, getting bedrooms ready, I now embrace the company.

In my wise old age I have learned that houseguests can be quite helpful…you’ve just got to get the whip out and put them to work!  And this group is so helpful that I’m not sure what I would do without them now!

Remember the little guy I told you about in the last post, ( The Making of an extraordinary Pirate Party, ) who was afraid of the mean pirate at Gavin’s birthday?  Well, he and his beautiful fiancé, Nicole, win the prize for most helpful houseguest.  See if you can spot the lovebirds, Camron and Nicole!

Incidentally , they are getting married this month! WOOHOO!

Every 5 minutes, Camron would ask me what he could do to help.  If I didn’t have an answer for him, he would grab the broom out of my hands, or the vacuum . Whatever he saw me doing, he would do.  At one point he even did the very odd job of gathering slugs out of my garden, (I’m afraid of slug poison because I don’t want my dogs to eat it…so I hand pick thousands of them and throw them to the ducks in the pond!). Anyway…that is above and beyond..I just love that boy/man!

And Nicole helped me and Mitchie in the kitchen and built this beautiful sand castle Seastar cookie display!

Speaking of cookies, let’s check out the desserts for the party…I mean first things first!

I spy a Pie-Rat!

Mitchie is the queen of cookies.  Sometimes I chime in with elaborate and outrageous cookie designs that nobody eats.  Everyone eats Mitchie’s cookies and raves about them!  I like to think of my cookies as works of art.  I’m the decoration queen!

I will say that my meringue pops dipped in Sea foam cream and sprinkled with blueberries were pretty darn yummy, for a mere decoration!

Our friend Aubrey took charge of the grazing table.  Aubrey is quite the foodie and she loves cheese. (I mean , who doesn’t love cheese!)  She even has a instagram account called aubrey_eats!  So I knew she was the perfect pirate to be in charge of the grazing table.

Grazing tables are a great choice for a party 

Everyone can find something they like to eat on a grazing table.  The down side is that they can be really expensive!  So, all the party goers signed up to bring an item or two for the grazing table.  It was so much fun.  Everyone loved it! And it didn’t break anyone’s bank account!

Dave barbecued the hot dogs and Mitchie, Chloe and I made a bunch of side dishes.

Party decorations are my jam!

I love decorating, even more than food!

I even put a pirate hat on my rooster statue and begged my multi-talented sister, Mitchie, to make an Octopus mascot!

Nate stole the show with his pirate ship, Granny’s Pearl.

The finest ship in all the 7 seas!

We were pretty happy about the way the pirate mast decoration on the deck turned out.  However, Chloe and I must have redone the mast in the cottage garden 5 times.  We dyed old sheets, Mitchie sewed a sleeve in them, we made the cross piece of the mast, hoisted them up onto the bridge and zip tied them in place. 

Then, we looked at our creation and we were like:

“What is this? A pirate mast for ants?”

Wayyyy too small and it looked dumb.  We took it down, fussed with it, tried to make it look better. Over and over and over, we cut the zip ties, fussed with it, refastened new zip ties. Ugh.  We lived with it a few days and then, as the party loomed in the near distance, we went to the store and bought a new set of sheets with plans for a re-do. 

The day before the party, we finally got to the pirate mast re-do project, opened the sheets and realized that one of the two sheets that we bought was a stinking fitted sheet.  

Sophiaaaaa….help!  Sophia and her clan ran to Fred Myers and picked up a new one. I sent her a picture to make sure she didn’t make the same mistake that I did!

They also grabbed pounds

and pounds of ice …

and a pirate sign for our mailbox…our house is almost impossible to find without landmarks!

We finally finished the ship mast project…we weren’t in love with it but it would have to do!  Apparently we disliked it so much that I didn’t even bother to snap a picture! Next time we will get king sized sheets and add a pirate and a cannon!

In the early afternoon of party day, my swashbuckling scalawags arrived and I was blown away by their costumes.  When people show up to my parties going full-out in the costume department, my heart sings! 

These pirates were my best costumed guests ever!

That is one beautiful group of pirates, am I right?

The best costume award goes to my friend Larry.  I mean, he brought Carlos, a live bird. Carlos was very popular and such a great little sparkle in all the photos.

My Dave actually put forth a bit of effort.  The t-shirt is his typical, “meh…I don’t do costumes”, but this time he let Chloe put make-up on his face, so that’s a big step forward!

When everyone was assembled, I gave a speech to welcome the Sea Dogs and explain the rules of the treasure hunt. 

Everyone drew a ticket to find out what team they were on and one person from each team had the word “captain” on it.  Nate and Chloe were officers for each team to make sure there were no pirate cheaters in the bunch and to help with any confusion and facilitate activities and encrypted clue unscrambling.

The entire collection of scalawags gathered in Ye Old Bunghole Bar

They took a shot of “courage”. 

Then…on your mark, get set, go! 

The first clue was at the lower pond called Tooks Pond, (named after my momma…her childhood nickname). From the “get go” there was crazy confusion. 

Even though we pointed them to the lower pond, Sophia thought she knew better and lead everyone to the upper pond.  Her clan ran in that direction which caused the rest to follow like a herd of sheep!  Haha! 

We straightened that out and then the two groups pulled their first clue, which was in a bottle tied to a rope,  out of the pond. That is when the true craziness began. 

Gavin and Brit are highly competitive. 

They dashed to the first clue which was a good 5 minute hike uphill. 

The problem was, the rest of their team took 10 minutes to get there so the highly competitive Gav and Brit stood very impatiently waiting for the lollygaggers to get their fannies up there.  

Officer Chloe was in charge of this team and every time I passed her on the hunt, she was just shaking her head!  This group was full of energetic and competitive folks. They were full of sass. I was sure they would win!

Gav and Brit continued with this enthusiasm for the entire hunt and never really caught on that it didn’t matter how fast they went, they had to wait for their team to arrive before solving the clue so they may as well have stayed calm and paced themselves!

The other team was steady and calm, even though they had a rough start.  Their first clue got stuck on a rock, the bottle cracked and the clue got soaking wet.  I actually planned for that, so officer Nate pulled up his secret list of clues and read them the clue to keep the hunt going.  Phew!

Nate’s group included the most dedicated treasure huntress, Janae, for literally jumping in the muddy upper pond of Kidlum in order to retrieve a clue even though she could have just pulled the clue from the water by the rope it was tied to!

You’ve gotta love the dedication!

My other favorite story about this group occurred during the encryption pantomime section of the hunt.  The team had to unscramble a clue by using an encryption decoder.  The team stood single file and each member had to act out the letters one by one…like the old game of telephone only in pantomime form. 

The gestures that they were to recreate were pretty straight forward but by the time they got to the end of the line, a simple hand gesture turned into an elaborate ballet…honestly!

It was hysterical.  In my head I’m thinking, “this is going to take forever…I’m going to have to help them.”  So you can imagine that when all the gestures were passed along to Captain Crystal, my niece, and she got it on the first try…I was shocked!  

The steady team won! They paced themselves, read the clues calmly and conquered!

The losing team was not happy about this!

After the hunt it was time for our summer tradition of slip-n-slide. It is always a hoot! Everyone participated. Even the “Elders” like me!

Chloe and Nate win the award for most talented slip-n-sliders because of their mid-slide cheersing choreography!

The Swashbuckler Soiree was a blast. I think my favorite parts were stumbling upon little groups of conversation, laughter, smiles, dancing and hugs.

And, cousins recreating an old photo!

I live for this; the gathering of lots of lovely folks and watching these people, I love, enjoy themselves. There’s nothing better.

If you’d like to watch a video of this craziness, check out Chloe’s YouTube story!

Make beautiful memories! Throw a party for your loves! xoxo Jill