I love self portraits. I am a salt shaker. Pepper was missing. Hmmm where is he?

This is my friend and visiting partner Janice. She has been my therapy for many a sad day. Together we made 40 lbs of apples into 6 roasting pans of apple crisp.

I am on the activities committee with Janice. We had to start setting up at 9 am for a 6 pm party.I helped assemble this scene. It is hanging from the ceiling with fishing line. I was the helper to a contractor who is one of the sexiest men in my ward. I am so happy to report he is happily and lovingly married.

I also hung two spiders from the ceiling, and several umbrellas with spiders and bats and beads hanging from them.

I did not put the pots on the tables full of sparkly easter grass type stuff with spiders and skeletons on top of cheese cloth.

I was in charge of homemade root beer since I was the only Utah mormon on the committee. Everyone was fascinated that I knew how to make it. And that I had the recipe in my head. I was shocked they had never had it before. Weird Oregonians. I can find anything I want in the grocery store from gluten free flours and mixes to natural toothpaste and churizo so it did not occur to me that root beer flavoring was not available. I drove around forever trying to find it. Janice found it at a cake decorating specialty shop. It was hard candy flavoring. So I had to do math since it is 4x as strong as extract. It was still really strong. I ended up watering my first batch down. The worst part of it was since it used little flavoring it was a pale dirty brown color. Not a rich color. It looked like watered down soda but it was not. It was full of flavor and was a big hit. Most of the ward members had never had homemade root beer. Children were fascinated with the dry ice effects and the adults were intrigued with the overall concept and product. It was a hit.

I enjoyed this party of over 250 people. Almost everyone dressed up-adults included. It was so much fun even though I was chained to the root beer table making sure everyone had 7 oz of drink. Yes, the committee chair is a little OCD or something. Last party they had to measure 150 balloons with a tape measure to ensure they were all identical. We had to measure the umbrellas and beads on the ceiling. It was time consuming. Then I was told to get 9 oz cups and put 2 oz ice and 7 oz root beer into each cup. Hilarious! I so did not. I gave people what they wanted even refills! We did run out but not until the very end so I feel good about it. Overall it was a fun party and I am glad I went. I usually avoid ward family parties being single and alone.