Let me explain...in further detail. Before I even got to host the party, I had to decide on an occasion to have it (my 29th birthday) and then a venue at which to host. I really wanted to host the party on Western Australia's holiday island home - Rottnest Island. There were many reasons for this. One - I would be on the Island for the whole week on which my birthday fell as I managed to secure accommodation on the island from the Monday to the Friday. Two - It has lots and lots and lots of lovely beaches. Three - err, umm, actually no I can't think of any more reasons...I must have just had two. So this is where the difficulties start. One - My birthday fell on the Wednesday, which is of course a weekday. Now I was lucky enough to be on holidays on my birthday, but many of my friends and would be guests for my party were not. Two - All luggage gets on the island via ferry. Which would then mean a rather large four-poster bed (assembled or dis-assembled) would have to be part of my luggage. Three - no cars are allowed on the island, therefore all props, food etc would need to be transported to the location to the party by bike - and when I say bike, I mean PUSH bike, and that's a lota stuff to take by push bike.
This meant that there were now more reasons on the against rather that the 'for' so I axed the plan for Rotto and choose another location. Perth has lots of lovely beaches, all very pretty and all that, but also very busy. Especially right bang smack in the middle of summer, and not at all like the deserted expanses of sand in the book, so I decided to cheat a little. I would still have the party on a beach, but instead of an ocean beach, I choose a river beach. The beach I had in mind is across the road from my good friend and gym buddy's house. This I was hoping to be an advantage as if nature called, Jan was ever so helpful and generous in allowing my guests to use her rest-room.
So the location (and date, the Sunday after I returned home from Rottnest) were set. The next step was to find an antique-four-poster-hand-carved-Indian-bed. Now I do have a lot of stuff in my shed, as most people do, but unfortunately I did not have an antique-four-poster-hand-carved-Indian-bed. Hmm, what to do...what to do...Do I spend an absolute fortune purchasing such a bed for a one-evening event? I think not. Short of winning a multi-million dollar lotto draw I thought I would have to be more creative than that. The next best idea? Bunnings. No, I know they don't sell antique-four-poster-hand-carved-Indian-beds, but they do sell wood...and this is what antique-four-poster-hand-carved-Indian-beds are made from (I assume). So Louise (my boyfriends sister) and I put our wood working thinking hats off and headed to Bunnings. Here we had a stroke of genius. I knew that Bunning sold pre-turned table legs, so we headed to that section of the store. Indeed we found roughly the right shaped legs, and got two for each 'pole' of the bed, so when joined together they would be the correct height. Next we went round the corner to the lengths of flat cut pine and got four of those, to form the top boarders of the bed. Success, I thought and we left happy.
Next we went to Spotlight, where I spend the vast majority of my pay when left unsupervised. I headed straight to the paper machie section and lo and behold, they had paper machie duck shapes. Not geese, but 'ey whose going to be pedantic about that? We put four in a trolley and headed round to fabric. Here is where I normally start salivating and dreaming about all the beautiful things I could make...but this day I remained focused on the task at hand. Firstly we found some printed chiffon that looked very similar to the print and colours in the book, so that went in the trolley. Next, not wanting to spend half my next months mortgage payment on the required lace, we wondered off towards the lace curtaining, which went in the trolley to. Last we asked the constantly helpful team leader for sewing which fabric he would recommend for the 'white billowy stuff' (as I put it) and he showed us some voile which was on special. Perfect. We had the fabric cut and headed home with our ducks, fabric, wood, and some paint to decorate our 'bed frame' as per the image in the book.
Here are pictures of the fabric, Louise and the ducks and wood and and one of my cats - Duke - sizing up the newest 'animal' members of the household.
Over the next few days we set about painting the wooden poles and cutting out triangles and parallelograms out of silver card board to glue onto the posts with PVA glue. Philip - the lovely husband of my friend, cut out the rough shape of the top boards of the wood with his jigsaw, AND gave them a first coat of paint. He even dropped them back off to me! I made him a tray of home made marshmallows to say thanks. We started off with the preparation quite well, but quickly began to run out of time. Louise was not able to help as much as she had planned due to situations beyond her control, and in two days I was due to board a ferry to Rottnest at which point all preparation would have to cease, and then when I returned it would be less than 48 hours before the party. So, working until all hours amongst preparing for a 5-day Rotto jaunt, I did manage to get some more of the painting done and cut out the rest of the shapes required. I left for Rottnest feeling a little worried about the lack of preparation, but the second I went for my first snorkel on a sun-soaked beach...all thoughts of the party vanished.
Fast forward five days and post amazing Rottnest vacation: I had a lot to do. Purchase the groceries, make all the food and drinks, finish the bed frame, sew the 2 pieces of chiffon fabric together (as I could not get one continuous piece) pack the car, join the bed frame together, set up the party site...And whenever I am faced with this much work in a short period of time, I think the best thing to do is just to get into it! On the Saturday I purchased the food, made the punch so the flavours could develop in the fridge overnight, cooked the chilli relish and garlic aioli and worked a little more on the bed poles joining them together with wood glue and clamps. I went to bed exhausted but my head still spinning with how much I had to do the next day.
The Sunday started badly. I removed the clamps from the pole and they immediately fell apart. I left that problem with my boyfriend and set about doing the rest of the cooking. I realised that although I had read through the recipes a lot earlier than for previous parties, I had not thought about how I would actually cook the crab meat on site. I rang two of my friends and arranged for them to bring camp stoves to the party. Then I made a monumental amount of food, 20 individual vanilla slices, 30 or so lamingtons, mixed up the spices for the Chai tea, chopped the vegetables ready to fry and prepared the salad for the burgers. I then strained the punch and sampled it (YUM!!).
My friend Jan had called me a few times during the day to give me an update on the KSS (Kite Surfing Situation). The KSS is how many kite surfers and quantity of related equipment is taking up room on the beach.On any windy day all the Kite Surfing enthusiasts converge on this section of the river and, well, kite surf. The news was not good, but ever the optimist we finally packed the car and headed off. Gavin (my boyfriend) had sorted out a plan to assemble the frame on the beach and then we could drape the fabric over the top.
We arrived safely, and the weather was actually a summer storm (which I was incredibly pleased about) and in my eyes that was the last thing that happened successfully. For starters, there were kite surfers on the river and beach, a lot of kite surfers. After a bit of searching we did find a spot on the sand, and began unpacking the car. Much to the bemusement of the kite surfers and other people enjoying a brief evening stroll along the river front, we pulled out of the car four poles (very hurriedly joined together), four planks of painted wood, eskies, glassware, bags of food and a lot of fabric. As I mentioned earlier the weather was actually perfect for the party. Overcast with dark clouds and a nice warm evening. However, it was windy...Together Gavin and I attempted, unsuccessfully to join the frame together. We would get one section joined together, walk around to the other side and the first side would fall apart. We would try again, think we had it, and then it would crumble yet again. (and our not so shy onlookers found it highly amusing) Finally after much battling, we had all parts together, and tried to turn it up the right way on to the beach. We did, it fell apart and then we decided we were beaten. Now I am extremely grateful for Gavin taking on the job of joining together the bed frame, but as a Financial Planner, he is not so much the Do-It-Yourself-Type, and therefore wood work is not his forte. The nails were to short, the hammer not good quality and the screws and brackets were not really suited to the purpose. But babe, I love you, and thanks for trying! So instead of an assembled bed frame we ended up with four poles (one slightly crooked) sticking out the sand with a duck at the foot of each post. Obviously there was no way we could drape the fabric over the frame, so we tied it to branches on nearby trees. At this point (struggling to hold my dress down with the wind, worried I would not be able to cook the food, upset over the bed frame not working out) what I would have liked to have done was put everything back in the car, go home and down a bottle of wine. But my mother and father brought me up better than that. Whenever something would not go the way I planned, they would always remind me that there are a lot of people out there, that at that very second that had it worse than it did, and that whatever the catastrophe was, it was not nearly as bad as world famine, or my house burning down, etc etc. They are of course, right. By now my guests had started arriving so I began serving them the peach and ginger punch. Now if you don't wish to purchase Fleur Woods book 'Food Fashion Friends' for any other reason, it is still worth it for the punch recipe. I loved it, my friends loved it, nuff said.
It was now time to tackle the next problem, frying the potato chips, herbs and garlic and crab and vegetables for the burgers. One camp stove down Russell (my friends fiance) set up his stove and we crossed all our fingers and toes that it would work (and be safe to use) in the wind. It did eventually heat the oil enough to cook the potatoes, herbs and garlic, although certainly not to the fried quality that is depicted in the photos in the book. I also had not thought to pack a small table to cook on, so I was trying to do everything on a wooden board on the grass. I served the chips with the aioli and relish and people did find them tasty.
Next I set about the mammoth task of trying to fry enough vegetables for 20 people with one camp stove and pot, and light fading...Judging by how long it had taken to cook the potatoes, I was hoping the vegetables might be ready by my next birthday...So two cans of butane later, I surrendered to the camp stove and served COLD crab burgers with salad and no fried vegetables. I also had difficulties with the music. While lovely people had loaded the music on to ipods prior to the party, and I had speakers ready to link up, due to the wind, you could hardly hear it, and so it did not really add to the atmosphere.
Finally I brought out the lamingtons and vanilla slices and profusely thanked my guests for sitting out a party in quite windy conditions. Again without a table to prepare on, it was too hard to prepare the lamingtons as per instructions, put they still LOOKED delicious with all the berries piled on top of the board. I think that it was roughly at this point that my friend Shani said she greatly admired my spirit in being able to prepare and host parties like these. In my head (or perhaps I said it out loud I can't remember) I said 'hmm, my 'spirit' certainly did not feel cool calm and collected earlier in the day while preparing for the party.
With the party now winding down after watching a pretty sunset, I gave up even making the chai tea and there was no gas left in the camp stove or me. People began to leave, so we packed up, and a slightly sun-burnt, and very tired boyfriend drove me home...
