With everything going on in May, we didn't really have much time to celebrate our anniversary this year (a lot - I mean, we did honor each other and the day, but we never got to the Big Thing). Some years ago we got Joy a murder mystery social game, but we never ended up putting it together. This year she wanted to finally get to that. Pity we couldn't find it! So we bought another one, a murder in fairy tale land. Once Elder Watson was off in Pennsylvania and we finally finished sending our kids to church youth camps, we had a few brain cells to put on a big party on July 18.
Joy: Thank you for making it happen, Derrill!
You are very welcome, my love.
Short version: We had the Dummars, Heiers, Van Valkenburgs, and Johnstons over as the other guests. Each of us played a role from a fairy tale setting with very thinly veiled name changes (Ice White is Snow White; Rumble Milton is Rumplestiltskin….). It was really, really fun handing out the first clues a week in advance because everyone was so excited about the game and talking about getting their costumes together. It felt like a right proper party!
Joy: I felt like we were getting together a masquerade with how much detail everyone was putting into their costumes.
We did put in the invitations that folks could dress up as much or as little as they felt comfortable and fun, and I think we picked the right crowd for this.
Joe and Chelle Dummar as the Knave of Hearts and Queen Black
Sue and Jim Johnston as Scarlet Cloak and Magnifico
Joy and Derrill Watson as Pandella and Prince Edward Jon
and Shelby and Eric Heier as Bella and Rumple Milton
Preparing for the game took a long time. "Yeah, poor Derrill. If we ever do this again, we need to remember that it took a long time, cause you gave yourself crunch time, and it was sad you had to do it in so short a time." Okay, we bought a kit that included most of the story and some props. It needed serious help. First, they claim it's for 10 people, male and female, but didn’t acknowledge before we bought it that there were 7 roles for women that were all necessary, and the only 3 male roles were optional. At first I only saw that there weren’t enough male roles in total, so I started by rewriting optional character Wicked Witch of the West (original) -> Naughty Witch (theirs) -> Warlock of Osland (mine), and started creating a character for The Beast from scratch. Then I realized all the men were non-essential and there were too many essential female roles, so then I rewrote two characters (Maleficent (original) -> Magnificent (their version) -> Magnifico (my version) and Alice in Wonderland -> Alicia -> the Knave of Hearts), and that required rewriting everyone else's clues, backstories, and romances! Anyway, once we figured out the cast of characters, I then had to rewrite some of the poorly written clues to make people more reliant on each other, the story clearer, to give people a fighting chance of figuring out whodunnit, I let chat completely rewrite their confessions, and … [Six hours later]
"Was it only six?" No.
"It took over work time for a little while." It's summer *shrug*. We finally had a good/decent story put together. I enjoyed my creative endeavors. At least one night I was enjoying myself so much that I couldn't sleep until 3am.
Another reason for me to rewrite a large chunk of it by myself is that I accidentally opened the Big Spoiler paper, thinking it was the instructions for the host and ruined the surprises for myself right off the get go. But if I handled all the behind the scenes stuff, that would preserve the mystery for Joy. "Poor Derrills." We sat down together to decide who should play which characters and we leaned very heavily on Joy's preferences for that. Actually, we spent one date together prepping for the adventure, making decisions and getting costumes and delivering the formal invitations....
JT made
brownies for us, and he is very proud of how great they turned out. We also
made Sue's “Christmas Trash” dessert and Chelle's p.b. bars.
Dinner was a potato bar. We decorated the house a lot – spent all of Friday reorganizing
and straightening and such. We had two afghans on the wall, partly to hide the plumber's construction work we were still in process of repairing and partly just because they look nice.
We went to the dollar store for rainbow party tablecloths, golden paperware,
golden sparkly tinsel over the doorways. We borrowed Nia's magical books to provide table lighting. And the house
looked nicer!
One of them was the chief villain trying to take over the Enchanted Realm – cursing people, sending out mercenaries, kidnapping children to steal their youth, all the trimmings. During the second round, she is found dead (in a chalk outline of JT we hid under the rug) and we debated who among us had rescued the realm from her evil. It's important to note that until it was time for her to die, she had thought she was going to be the murderer! Even the murderer was not told they were guilty until they read their own confession out loud. Everyone had voted on who they thought the guilty party was, and oddly enough only the murderer and their spouse guessed correctly. (You see me being careful not to spoil anything for y'all, too!) I made a show of shuffling everyone's confessions in front of them to keep up the suspense, but I stacked the deck so that the murderer would be the last one revealed anyway.
Everyone’s costumes were really good. Joe Dummar (the Queen of Hearts’ executioner) was disappointed my instructions had included a *foam* weapon, so in addition to a large foam double-bladed axe, he also brought a knife and a sword. You can see Eric Heier (Rumble Milton) took the character in a mafia boss / loan shark direction, which went over well. Joy was Pandella (Cinderella) and I was a prince of the good king (Prince Edward Jon), though not her Prince Charming, sadly.
Mollie Van Valkenburg and Chelle played a great daughter/mother duo, with some excellent banter and gritted-teeth-cheesy lines for their love/hate relationship. "Whatever makes you happy, mother" *curtsy* (It's really hard to curtsy while seated at a dinner table!) Joy: "Their interactions were my favorite."
Nia filled several servant roles, including Detective Grimm bringing in the forensic evidence, while JT went over to the Heiers to help babysit the Van Valkenburg littles. I think everyone had a great time.
Happy 21st anniversary, my love!
"Hooray!"
Nia decorated each person's name tag and did a superb job!
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