re: An Earthquake Dinner

Our friends Emily and Rob invited us to their annual Earthquake Dinner, held appropriately every year on the anniversary of the big 1906 SF earthquake. This is one of my favorite "theme" party ideas because it combines a classy dinner party with a little useful emergency training.

The first rule is no electricity - all candlelight, all the time. That's how they had to do it in 1906.


We started off the evening with some appetizers and a presentation on "triage." Rob gave us a little lesson on how to assist in an emergency situation by quickly sorting victims by the severity of their condition. When you don't have the resources to treat everyone immediately, you determine who is in most need of urgent care by assigning them colors - green is able-bodied, yellow is for minor flesh wounds, red is critical condition, and black is ... well. You don't want to be evaluated as black.


Then we played a little game where we had to evaluate a series of photos of injured people, and assign them different colors based on a quick assessment of their injuries. It was a fun AND educational party.

I grew up learning about the importance of a 72 hour kit, and other emergency preparedness activities, but was thinking this week about how Derek and I don't have much of an emergency plan other than "Well, I guess we can drink the water from our toilet, right?" We took the first step by at least determining a meeting spot, so that if we are not at home during some sort of disaster that wiped out phone service, we can find eachother. Next step - maybe I should work on some sort of first-aid kit other than a pack of neon band-aids in the cupboard.

Any advice on emergency preparedness?

re: Another Year, Another Bikeride

Since a year ago we made all of our family and friends hop on bicycles to celebrate our wedding, it seemed only fair to keep the tradition alive and do it again for our one year anniversary.

We organized a little trip over the Golden Gate Bridge by bike (GG Bridge not actually pictured here thanks to a severely foggy August afternoon. Sorry tourists.):


First stop was Fish. in Sausalito for some chowder and calamari.



Then we headed to the Marin Headlands Hostel for a sleepover, because I can't imagine anything more romantic than spending your one-year anniversary eve in a dorm room style twin-size bunkbed with plastic mattress covers.


We did enjoy a breakfast in the morning of yummy hot chocolate recently imported from France, and some fresh homemade Milk Pail croissants that made all the other hippie hostel guests cry into their cold muesli and yogurt with jealousy.

One year down, many more to go. Enjoying the ride.

re: Earthquake Prepardness

Our friends Emily and Rob invited us to their annual dinner to celebrate the anniversary of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. I'm a sucker for parties with themes, and this one turned out to be both educational and fun.

First of all, appropriately, the lights were off and all business was conducted by candlelight:


Everyone divided into teams and participated in earthquake quizzes/challenges between courses (they served a yummy, traditional cioppino with toasted garlic sourdough bread).

The first quiz made us take stock of what we had on us that could be useful in an earthquake - cash, a knife, any food, etc. We lucked out with a new mom on our team, which means she had an entire purse full of cereal and munchies, while the rest of us unprepared fools just had cellphones in our pockets. We also were quizzed on basic earthquake facts and regional info, and had to identify things like water main wrenches and SF landscapes pre-earthquake. Our team did okay .. but mostly thanks to lucky guesses and the whole mom thing.

Nothing like a party where you are eating, drinking and being merry to remind you that you might not be quite as ready for an earthquake as you'd like to think you are.

DIY Party: Glitter Confetti Eggs

I'm a longtime fan of the parties thown and featured on Oh Happy Day, so I am so glad that Jordan asked me to add a few of mine to the mix on a monthly basis.

We posted the first party today - a DIY Glitter/Confetti Egg Game!

Confetti eggs (aka Cascarones) are like mini pinatas for your head. Traditionally, hollowed out eggs are broken over the head of a friend, showering them with confetti....and supposedly good luck (but definitely confetti).

We decided to shake things up in our hunt this year by turning it into more of a game.

Fill most of the eggs with confetti (in our case, Fruity Pebbles), but - one of the eggs in the batch is filled with gold glitter, and whoever ends up with the head full of glitter gets an awesome prize (besides all the good luck they have coming to them).




Full party instructions can be found on Oh Happy Day.

(special thanks to Robyn Kessler of Verité Photography, whose magic photo fingers managed to capture minuscule pieces of flying confetti and glitter, and her husband Shawn who knows things you wouldn't suspect about glitter and fruity pebbles)

re: Love: The Grand Experiment

Along with getting married comes bridal showers, and I am lucky to have friends who have offered to throw them for me. I had to share details of our San Francisco shower, because the details are just amazing. My dear friend Emily REALLY outdid herself on this one (with a thanks to Jordan for the invites and other friends for contributing food).

The theme of the party was R&D, The Grand Experiment (R&D being Derek's and my initials, and "The Grand Experiment" being an awesome excuse to incorporate science into a bridal shower).


Upon entering, all guests were issued a lab coat and clipboard, with a Grand Experiment pencil for scientific note-taking. (Seriously. All the pencils had "The Grand Experiment" stamped on them).



The tablecloth was a bunch of different graph papers sewn together, and the flowers were kept in beakers.



The food was laid out in threes - marked A, B and C for control purposes. Each food group had three components - a generic version, a grocery-store-but-brand-name version, and a gourmet version. Everyone tasted each of the three types of each food, and then voted on which one they liked best. At the end, by raise of hands, we tallied which foods were most popular. All my favorites were represented: cheese, chocolate, bacon, mint icecream, chips and salsa, chocolate chip cookies, junior mints and more.









The whole thing was positively nerdy.

It was actually a lot of fun to find out which of our friends had more refined taste, and which ones could get away with eating generic for the rest of their lives. I'm not surprised that my expensive tastes showed up in my food choices (if there had been a Prada brand cupcake there, I am sure I would have tasted it) . The big upset was when McDonald's honey packets won over the special raspberry-flavored gourmet honey from Marin.

We finished it all off with my favorite cake - the princess cake from Schubert's Bakery. No need for any testing there. Already know this one is awesome.

I am so glad that my shower was a good excuse for fun food and friends. All in the name of science.

(some of these photos were stolen from liz, who hosted us in her home/laboratory)