re: A Birthday StorySlam

We're big fans of The Moth and the Porchlight story telling series in our house, so to celebrate my birthday last week we decided to host our own StorySlam with our friends. A StorySlam is a live storytelling event where participants from the audience are chosen at random to come up to the mic and tell their true personal tales.

I rented out a little coffee shop around the corner from our apartment, set up a mic, and all night we drank delicious hot chocolate the barista whipped up for us and listened to our friends tell 5 minute true stories on the topic of "getting older."

Willing participants put their name in a box, and we drew 10 names over the course of the evening to tell a story in front of the group. We borrowed our rules from the Moth StorySlam, which were as follows: 

It must be TRUE
Stories are strictly non-fiction.   

It must be ON TOPIC
The story you've prepared should be intrinsically related to the theme of "Getting Older".   

It must be YOUR STORY TO TELL
Were you there? Are you one of the main characters? Your involvement in the events as they unfold is essential. No journalism. Eyewitness accounts only.   

It must be ON TIME
You've got to squeeze all of that into 5 minutes. 

And, if you'd like a taste of what we heard that evening, here's Collin, telling a story about a blind raccoon and his golden birthday. Enjoy:

Birthday Story Slam | November 30, 2012 from Rebecca Wright.

(pretty photos taken by Kristian + Kimmi, video by Julio)

A Hanky Pahnke Party

I'm a little behind in updating over here, but I had to share the details of a bridal shower that I helped throw for my dear friend Emily last month. She happens to be marrying a dude with the last name Pahnke (pronounced "panky") which means that OBVIOUSLY I was going to take full advantage of the giggle inducing surname and throw her a "Hanky Pahnke" party. I decided to take the "hanky" part of the party theme and run with a vintage hankie angle, because although I wanted there to be people throwing underwear all around during this party, I still wanted them to be doing it in a classy setting.

First, THE INVITES! I pulled out my trusty gocco and screened the pertinent information onto a bunch of frilly vintage hankies. Then I packaged them into velum envelopes so that the recipients could get a sneak peek of their individual cuteness and the post office workers could feel a little jealous:

Next, THE DECOR. We pretty much hung a hankie onto anything that was hangable. Vintage handkerchief buntings! Vintage handkerchief chair backs! Vintage handkerchiefs underneath all the milkglass serving dishes! I started worrying a little about overkill, but I think the fact that every hanky was a little different made it just feel nicely themed with just a hint of feeling like you were living in your grandmother's dresser drawer.

And it didn't hurt that the food was really pretty too:

For the entertainment portion of the evening, we threw a white elephant underwear exchange. Perhaps my favorite gift that was opened was the Buty Panty (aka the generic version of the Booty Pop) which calls itself a "natural looking padded panty preshaped with contour foam to resemble a curvaceous bottom." Needless to say, this was a hot ticket item.

You couldn't expect us to keep the whole thing classy, right?

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: Fancy Fingers

I first got clued into the fact that the 80s were revisiting us via people's fingernails when my friend Claire started posting pictures of glitter-filled, rhinestone encrusted manicures. I've always trusted that her perfectly polished fingers were firmly attached to the pulse of what's cool, and it was then confirmed when Pinterest started to fill itself with photos of nail art in bright colors, mixed patterns, and all sorts of tribal designs. Suddenly boring nails were, well, boring, and I wanted to start expressing myself through some fancy fingers.

I scoured the internet for nail inspiration (trust me - there is plenty out there), invested in some neon polish, paint pens and a fancy nail stamping set, and then hosted a Ladies Activity Club party where we all helped eachother achieve the kind of nail polish nirvana that none of us had experienced since we were 12 years old.

Here is the photographic evidence:





All the LAC ladies are in their 20s/30s and have jobs, which meant some of our choices were more conservative, less 80s. Since I was the only one that wasn't meeting with Japanese businessmen or interviewing prospective students and their parents this week, I took advantage of the fact that I had someone else to help me compensate for a left hand that has the dexterity of a newborn and did some free hand tribal inspired drawings (copied almost exactly from the design spotted here)


We had also had some conservative glitter (though one sneaky finger has gold polka dots)


A sassy lil red slash:


And some zigzag stamping thrown into the mix:


We also had fun trying to take photos of our hands and not make them look like weird fleshy sausages. Though most nail photos are taken with the hand grasping something like a bottle of nailpolish to properly showcase the nails, we also thought the demure hand over hand was an appropriate solution:


If anyone is ready for a full nail makeover, come to my house. We can also have a sleepover and talk about boys.

DIY Dinner Party - Test Your Tastebuds

For my latest party post over on Oh Happy Day, I decided to embark on a little adventure in food.

For this event we pitted some of our foodie friends against one another in a "TEST YOUR TASTEBUDS" dinner party. Nobody knew what food was being served, so each course was a surprise as it came out. Guests were given cards to keep score on, and got points based on how many correct ingredients that they could identify in each course. We served a cheese plate and a three course meal in Jordan's studio:




It was fun to see everyone taking their time eating each bite, trying to figure out what each of the different tastes were (and trying to sneak peeks at their neighbor's sheet).

At the end of the evening we tallied our scores and the winner took home a Tartine gift certificate! It'd be easy to scale this party down and just do a cheese plate for your guests - you'll be surprised how hard it is to know what your food is made of!

Get the full story and more photos over at Oh Happy Day.

******
All pretty photos are by Robyn Kessler of Verité Photography for Oh Happy Day.

The fancy food was prepared by the talented Tom Call and helpers on a tiny cooking stove in the back of Jordan's studio! If you would like to try some of Tom's cooking without the tastebud trickery involved, check out his fun n' fancy pop-up dinner events in SF and SLC.

If you find yourself in the Bay Area and want to "test your tastebuds" without doing any of the prep, keep an eye on Maverick's semi-annual Mystery Dinners or the Punchdown's blind flight challenge.

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.