Mardi Gras 2005

 

webcams working!

Posted on January 21, 2005 by britta

If you were following along with my Halloween prep, you might remember I got VERY frustrated the night before my party when I realized the webcams were broadcasting but not FTPing their image per minute. 🙁 I even had a friend helping me in the last hours before the party and we just could NOT get it working. I suspected some conflict with the OS X update I had installed during the week, and there have been several updates since then.

Anyway, I hooked up the webcams this morning before work (I couldn’t find the power supply for the ethernet hub last night – doh!), configured them at work, since at least the broadcast was still fine, then tested the FTP…still broken until I methodically went through the same troubleshooting as I swear we did at Halloween…finally success! Hooray!

Before anyone asks, the cams aren’t even positioned to show anything, so I’m not posting any links…no grand decor yet anyway since I’m getting the carpet cleaned tomorrow morning, then will decorate on Sunday. Perhaps then I might give a preview here… 😉

Happy Friday everyone!

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Mardi Gras progress…

Posted on January 24, 2005 by britta

I had a productive and fun weekend…nice balance!

Friday night was Shrek 2 and pizza with a couple friends, plus a bit of Queer Eye for the Straight Girl…I’m not sure I’d ever have the guts to propose to a guy!

Saturday

  • all carpet except both bedrooms upstairs professionally steam cleaned and dried
  • cut up xmas tree (saved trunk in manageable logs for firewood, which required handsawing)
  • 3 buckets of weeds pulled from backyard, including shoulder & back pain from the hula hoe!
  • made double-batch crab triangles & froze
  • made spinach balls & froze
  • grilled creole chicken skewers & froze

    Sunday

  • baked 8 dozen sugar cookies
  • mixed up royal icing
  • fixed heavy copper sun decoration on garage! (stupid gardeners the landlady hired snipped through my hangers while they pruned the creeping fig away from the garage roof…this was a challenge since I no longer have access to a ladder that reaches that high!)
  • put down black plastic in upper beds
  • put 3 bags new bark over black plastic
  • planted two pumpkins (purchased pumkpin shatterd into 6 pcs, guts of one of mine in 3 chunks)
  • spread mulch on top of weeds
  • baked one pumpkin & froze
  • iced sugar cookies base layer
  • hung large mask on wall with backdrop
  • put up tiebacks & drapes in entryway
  • put webcams in final positions (including running ethernet cable along the wall into the kitchen)
  • got out all masks

    Yes, the webcams are now positioned…in the kitchen on the table you can see the 8 dozen sugar cookies iced and drying to be decorated tonight after choir rehearsal, and the big mask I made is on the living room wall…with clean carpet everywhere…hooray! 😉

    The challenge this week is how to get all the party prep done, including my own mask still, when I have Wed & Thurs evenings occupied by our annual work dinners…hmm…wish me luck!

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    Successful Mardi Gras

    Posted on January 31, 2005 by britta

    Whew! Only 17 of us this year, since a lot of my “regulars” weren’t able to make it, but we had fun anyway. I did get my costume on BEFORE any guests arrived (two years in a row for Mardi Gras!) and Kylie the Kitty even made several appearances throughout the party! That was such a first that her presence was copiously photographed and videotaped – haha!

    I could have posted yesterday, but I was trying to get the photos organized and get as much cleaned as possible…all the dishes are done, all decorations are down but not yet put away, my living room is almost back to “normal” which it hasn’t been really since before Halloween…heh!

    My goal is to get the britta.com webpage up today if possible, but definitely before the end of the week…otherwise it’ll get in line behind Halloween 2004 & Year Five at Hogwarts (2003!) projects that are still not up…horrible I know… *sigh*

    Hope you all had a good weekend!

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