Medieval Feast Preparations

Well, we have set the date for our medieval feast for Aug. 6, and we even finished our invitations. This involved sealing wax from Michaels, as well as a crown stamp from a medieval activity book thing from the L's. It was complicated and took a whole morning, but the seals turned out somewhat recognizable! We delivered them to our neighbors, and they were a big hit. We still have to deliever them to our Bible study families. If everyone comes, we'll have 15 kids (and one baby), and 13 adults and teenagers. Thanks to some help from Aunt Claire , I've settled on a menu as well. It's all finger food, of course--no utensils back then! We're going to have chicken legs, which Bob will grill outside (and I'm going to marinade in Italian dressing for some flavor, although not historical acuracy), a raw veggie platter (with dip, although again not accurate!), big slices of some crusty bread I have yet to find, cheese chunks and crackers, and fruit like grapes and melons. Then for dessert we'll have gingerbread and lemon squares, although not from any accurate old recipes. I looked at some, but they were too weird, and I do want the kids to actually eat!

Yesterday was "cape-making day". We hit the jackpot at WalMart a few days ago when we found this great shiny purple fabric on the sale rack for only $2.00 a yard. This fabric SCREAMED "capes"! In fact, when the guy was cutting off our length of it, he said, "Let me guess--you all must be making capes". The boys were astonished at his perspicacity. So yesterday I cut it all into cape lengths for varied sizes of children, and the boys of course had to wear them all afternoon. That was when I realized the capes weren't going to make it to the party without unraveling if I didn't attempt to do some kind of sewing. Now I haven't used my sewing machine for years. I remembered it having all sorts of problems and something being broken when we were in Ohio, but Bob seemed to think we had fixed it. I went off to the dark recesses of our basement storage room to find it and bring it up to our dining room. We had some troubles getting the bobbin wound,but eventually we would up with enough to start. It worked fine for a little while, but then it got all tangled up inside the bobbin case, which is what I always remembered happening. I was so frustrated, but I decided to just try raising the bobbin thread again, and miraculously it started working agian. I was able to completely hem all 4 of the capes for my boys (yes, this took me several hours!), and now I am actually thinking of just hemming the bottoms of all the other capes. That seems to be where they unravel the fastest, and since I am not what you might call a "good seamstress" (my hems are not, technically, "straight"), I have no desire to sew everyone's all the way. I'm sure any other mom would actually do a much better job, so they can feel free, if they so desire! Plus, I think it would take me the rest of the time to finish it all, and I still have lots of other stuff to do! We also want to finish building our model castle out of boxes, and we need to finish making the little catapults. We're going to use them to shoot dried lima beans over a pretend cardboard castle wall for a game. So things are coming together, and the boys are all really excited about the party. Hopefully it will be a lot of fun for everyone.