Murder in the Wild West

Last weekend, we participated in a Murder Mystery for our good friend, Jared's, birthday. This is the third Murder Mystery we have done with Jared and Michelle, and we always have a great time! These parties have special significance to us because we attended the first of the three on our very first date. All four of the couples who attended that party are now married. We love spending time with them and love participating in these fun games. Now, on to the party... Wild West style:
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The year is 1881 in the town of Roadkill.

Waylon Payne, the Judge of Roadkill has invited 8 people to witness the hanging of the Malevolent Seven, a gang of criminals who have victimized the town of Roadkill for several years. Unfortunately, before the hanging was to take place, Waylon Payne was found dead in his room. One of the guests that was invited to the hanging is the murderer. WHO DUNNIT?

Our hosts and good friends, Jared and Michelle 

P'Elvis (Jared): A mysterious gunslinger who rode into town just 2 days ago. He's a man with no belongings but the shirt on his back, his gun and his saddle.

Butch Chastity (Michelle): The first lady of outlaws. In her secret hide-out, a place called the Hole in the Mud, Butch plans the most daring of heists, including her many famed train robberies. It has been rumored that Butch has gotten away with more gold than any outlaw alive.

Jeff and Alice 

Elias Truist-Heath (Jeff): Young Elias is an up-and-coming heart-throb gunfighter. He can dazzle spectators with his quick draw and a spin from his guns, and when he's not showing off his slinging skills, he's demonstrating his pugilistic prowess. 

Elvira-Lynn (Alice): She's the proud madam of the Pigeon Ranch, the best little you-know-what in Roadkill. To look at her now, you'd never guess she was born in the gutter and suffered a sickly childhood, battling everything from consumption to bubonic plague. 

Chris and Tammi 

Chief Breaking Wind (Chris): The distinguished leader of the Cowpai tribe-an honorary position these days, since the entire Cowpai tribe fell victim to a mysterious disease several years ago and perished. Still, the stoic chief keeps his traditions alive, trusting that, with his help, the Cowpai will rise again. 

D'Adela Muerte (Tammi): Adela is a Mexican beauty with the most pious of spirits but is plagued by bad luck. She's been thrice-widowed-each time as a newlywed. Still, she knows that she will rise above her misfortune. Until then, she'll continue to wear her black mourning veil.

Sarah and Jonathon 

Helena Handcart (Sarah): Matriarch of the Handcart clan, Helena is the mother of the Handcart boys: all thirteen of them. Billy-Bob, Bobby-Rae, Little Ricky, Martin and Lewis, Harpo, Groucho, Sleepy, Sneezy, Manny, Moe and Jack. Oh-and, of course, the Beav. Unfortunately, she had to bury all thirteen of her sons after they were tragically killed in a shoot-out at a dairy farm. A strong woman, she has been able to survive, although most of the time she remains secluded on the sprawling Handcart Ranch, managing the family cattle business. Helena owns half the territory and never lets anyone forget it.

Wyatt Hertz (Jonathon): Wyatt Hertz is by far the most famous lawman in the West. He kept the wild frontier town of Roadkill under tight control, keeping the locals in line with an iron fist of fear. Now Wyatt runs a lucrative rent-a-horse business. He never lost a gunfight, and some folks believe he could take out a whole gunslingin' gang with a single round from his six-shooter.

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After 3 hours of delicious food, playful banter, and vicious accusations, the murderer (Elvira) was finally discovered. Working together, we all figured it out. That is pretty unusual because the last two murderers have been complete guesses that only a few people got right. 

The food was phenomenal. We were in charge of appetizers, so we tried to stick with the Old West theme and brought trail mix and chips and salsa. Jared made some AMAZING deep-dish pizzas and Michelle whipped up a plate of hot chocolate chip cookies smothered in vanilla ice cream. YUM! 

The costumes were also so fun and creative. Everyone really went all out. I loved the black hat and veil that Tammi wore. Her Mom made it for a 50th birthday party, and it worked perfectly. Poor Alice was stuck with a scandalous part (for the 2nd straight year), but she really did a great job with the costume and getting into character. I lacked any pioneer clothing, so I sewed myself a bonnet the night before using this tutorial. For the apron,  I used an old pillow case, sewed some lace to the bottom, and put a tie on it. It worked surprisingly well. The rest of our costumes came from D.I. 

Here are a few more pictures just for fun...

 In our front yard

(Thanks Tera and BJ for babysitting and taking our picture!)

The Whole Group

Harry Potter Mania!

*Warning: Very Long and Very NERDY post to follow*

I have long been a huge fan of the Harry Potter books and movies. I have read all of the books many times, and anxiously awaited the release of each new movie, especially the finale, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, part 2. I have wanted to do something Harry Potter themed for a while, but never really got around to it. Now that the end is here, I decided to go all out and throw a party. When throwing a Harry Potter Party, you have to go BIG or go home. I tried to make it a really memorable party. Planning it was so much fun. The excitement and anticipation during the preparations was as much fun as the party itself. We had an awesome group of people that were willing to play along and revel in the nerdiness!

The Invitations:

I found a replica of Harry's acceptance letter to Hogwart's and modified it for the invitation to the party.

It was then delivered to all the guests by owl post, of course.

The Sorting Ceremony:

No Harry Potter Party would be complete without a sorting ceremony. So without further ado... 

The Sorting Hat

The Sorting Hat might be my favorite creation for the party. I bought an old leather jacket at D.I., and then cut it up and sewed it back together using a pattern for a witch's hat. The hardest part of the whole process was trying to form the face. I crumpled it up into the best face I could, and then safety pinned the folds so they would stay. Then I sprayed the whole thing with fabric stiffener until it dried pretty hard. When it was dry, I removed the pins and VOILA!... a sorting hat. 

Jonathon was in charge of the actual sorting ceremony. He recorded some little sound clips about each house and then modified his voice using Garage Band. Then he put all the sound clips into itunes and hit the shuffle button. That made the sorting of the teams completely random, and completely awesome! It was pretty darn impressive. 

In the descriptions below, I have included Jonathon's clips because I thought they were pretty clever. During the actual sorting ceremony, all the guests were thinking (and saying) the same thing... 

"Not Slytherin, Not Slytherin!" 

Team Hufflepuff:

Corey and Brittany

"Hmmm... You're kind of hard to read. You're friendly, but I don't really know what to do with you... There's a place for people we don't know what to do with... HUFFLEPUFF!"

Team Ravenclaw:

Michelle and Jared

"Wow! We've got a real Einstein here. Do you even know what your I.Q. is? I know just what to do with you... RAVENCLAW!"

Team Slytherin:

Melodie and Gabe

"Hmm... You love to be in positions of power. You'll step on anyone to get to the top, won't you? SLYTHERIN!"

Team Gryffindor:

Darrell and Stephen

"Now let's see... you're brave and you're daring. Oh, and you're quite charming too if I do say so myself. GRYFFINDOR!"

The Food:

Shortly after the sorting ceremony, we had "The Welcoming Feast". All of the food served came from the Harry Potter books. I even found them on Harry Potter Wiki (Did you even know such a thing existed?) and printed out a little description of the food and where it was mentioned. The majority of food mentioned in the books were desserts and sweets, so our spread had plenty of those items, but I tried to have some "healthy" appetizers too. 

The appetizers:

*ham and cheese rolls

*Vol-au-vents 

*English Muffins

*Fruit

Desserts/Honeydukes Sweets:

*Treacle Tart (Harry's favorite food-- made from golden syrup and black treacle found at our local Bristish food shop)

*Pumpkin Pasties 

*Chocolate Frogs (Thanks for the frog mold, Hannah!)

*Peppermint Toads

*Golden Snitches (Ferrero Rocher chocolates with wax paper wings)

*Lemon Drops

*Licorice Wands (licorice dipped in white chocolate)

*Jelly slugs

And of course, BUTTERBEER!  

Jonathon whipped up a mean batch of butterbeer. It was extremely tasty. He used cream soda mixed with butterscotch ice cream syrup and then a whipped cream and butterscotch foam topping. YUM!

The Welcoming Feast

Treacle Tart and Pumpkin Pasties

Peppermint Toads, Snitches, and Chocolate Frogs / Lemon drops, Licorice Wands, and Jelly Slugs

After dinner, we started with our games. We decided to have a House Cup Tournament between the 4 teams. It involved 3 different games with the winning team receiving the trophy and bragging rights.

Task #1: O.W.L.'s and N.E.W.T.'s (Harry Potter Trivia)

After everyone was sorted, we started our first game. Each team had to answer a series of trivia questions about the Harry Potter books and movies. The O.W.L.'s were multiple choice and intended to be easier, while the N.E.W.T.'s were short answer and were to separate the average followers from the die-hards. The teams all did surprisingly well and Gryffindor and Slytherin tied for first with a score of 56 out of 70 points possible.

A sample N.E.W.T. question:

Q: What was the name of the Weasley's owl that was old and clumsy?   (anyone? anyone?)

A: Errol

The test takers were quite intense with their work...

Task #2: Wizard's Duel

The second game was a wizard's duel between the houses. Each team was given a "cheat sheet" with the names of some spells from Harry Potter. Two people squared off against each other with their wands at the ready. Then they were presented with a situation, and the one to get the correct spell first was declared the victor.

Example:

Situation: Shield Yourself

Correct Spell: Protego

Stephen cleaned house on this game. Seriously, the boy was good! Most of the time he didn't even need to look at the cheat sheet. Gryffindor took the lead on this task, followed closely by Slytherin. Michelle (from Ravenclaw) was definitely my favorite though. She chose the spell she was going to use before the situation was even presented. If that one didn't work, she just started going down the list. She even won a duel that way! Here is a montage of some of the Duels:

 Task #3: Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Bean Taste Test

In the books, they describe jellybeans that are every flavor imaginable. We found some jellybeans made by Jellybelly that duplicated this idea. They were called "Beanboozled." The box contained pairs of jellybeans that looked identical, but one was a good flavor and one was a nasty flavor. The teams were given 13 different bags of beans and had to guess the flavors. Half of the bags were marked with asterisks and had the potential of being a really nasty flavor. The teams didn't have to try the asterisked ones, but if they at least tried them, they got bonus points.

Some sample flavors: cherry, watermelon, strawberry shortcake, toothpaste, dog food, skunk spray

It is really amazing how accurate the flavors are. You would never believe that a jellybean could taste like skunk spray, but it seriously does. After you eat it, your breath even smells like skunk spray. Ewww!

Team Slytherin won the contest and secured the coveted House Cup Trophy by a slim 5 points over Gryffindor. It was not, however, without some difficulty. Poor Melodie got a really good taste of vomit (voted the worst flavor of the bunch). Her quote, "If this isn't a vomit flavored bean, it will be soon." See for yourself:

The House Cup Champions

SLYTHERIN: Melodie and Gabe!

What a FUN Party, and a GREAT way to celebrate before the final Harry Potter movie!

The Movie:

We had to wait until Saturday to see the movie because our insurance company offered us free tickets to an exclusive showing with free snacks and giveaways. It was too good to pass up. I LOVED the movie! I thought the first 3/4 of the movie was absolutely perfect. It moved along so well and stuck so closely to the book. The ending was great cinematically, but the die-hard in me was a little sad that the ending was a bit different than the book. All of the main components were the same, but they drug it out a little bit with Harry and Voldemort, which I thought wasn't necessary. All in all though, I was so happy to have such a great movie to close out the series. What a fun adventure this has been!

At the theater with our VIP tags

At our party, we also watched this youtube video from BYU's Divine Comedy. We were laughing so hard we were crying. If you watch it, make sure to put the closed caption on.

Murder Mystery Dinner

One of our good friends, Jared, had a birthday party/murder mystery dinner last week.  Our first date was to a murder mystery with Jared and Michelle 7 years ago, so we were excited to attend another one. The murder mystery was set in 1937, so we did our best to dress the part. Jonathon found the perfect hat at Walmart and learned to tie his DI bow-tie by watching a youtube video. I thought he looked awesome. I found some pretty purple beads and then Hannah did my hair. She used a curling iron to do some finger waves and then created a faux bob. She did a great job. (I think our look was slightly more 20's inspired, but oh well.)

 My character was Ali Bigh, a famous English murder mystery writer (who, I learned later, also was a compulsive murderer... lovely). Jonathon played Roger S.B. Astird, the illegitimate son of the murdered man.

 I loved dressing up and having my hair done. It was fun to try a new style. Women in the 20's and 30's really worked hard on their appearance. Those hairstyles are not easy, but it sure made me feel fancy.

Hannah, the hairstylist and her "project"

 Here is our host couple, Jared and Michelle.

The other players in our mystery were Kelli and Pete and Alice and Jeff. Everyone looked fantastic, and it was fun to get to know some new couples.

Some more pictures from the night:

 Getting into character

Our "serious" pose

WHO DUNNIT?

It was Jonathon... um, Rog.

I didn't get pictures of the dinner, but it was divine! We had a fancy blueberry salad, curry chicken, a cheese course, and chocolate fondue for dessert. It was a fun date. Happy Birthday, Jared!