Last Saturday I celebrated my birthday for family. It was quite relaxed for I had done all the cleaning on Friday evening and only had to do the grocery shopping and preparing munchies on Saturday. Guests were welcome from 14:00 but the first family arrived at about 14:45.

• Money from grandmother Hellenthal
• Money from grandparents Haeke
• A photo of my dad in the cockpit of a glider (zweefvliegtuig)
• Old photo's of my mother and brother (when he was still a toddler) and other relatives
• 4 tea mugs with flower faeries on them
• Cocktail picks; 5 with a cow on top (in a cow shaped container) and 7 assorti
• 4 Discworld books
• 3 plants for on the balcony
• 2 food storage containers for the cat food
• A small glass vase for on the wall for 1 flower
• A ceramic oil lamp pot
• Money from Matthijs' parents

The munchies: salad (huzaren salade), cake with preserve (jam) and strawberry, 'soesjes' and strawberries with molten chocolate.

For dinner we had soup with the salad and bread. Apple crumble for desert, though it was 21:30 when it was finally ready.

On Sunday we went to Castlefest anyway. The tent wasn't completely finished yet but I just wanted to go. So we took the car for a 2 hour drive (train would've been more than 3 hours) through the rain but when we arrived it was dry already. The rain had discouraged a lot of people so it wasn't too crowded but the weather turned out rather nice in the afternoon.

Got loot there too:

• A 7 cm long hunting knife with sheath. Needs sharpening.
• 3 bottles of mead
• White sage for burning. It should clear the house of bad luck, but Matthijs bought it because he was curious to the scent.
• S-hooks for keeping our cooking utensils up from the ground on larps
• A decorated looking glass from Steelweaver, for IC burning of images on wooden plates
• A flask on a cord (= necklace) from Steelweaver

We went home at about 16:30 so we could work a bit more on the tent. Despite being really tired ('gaar') we got some work done and went to bed around 23:00. If I'm correct today will see the last bit of tent work. We've got the closures of the doors sewn on, but they're on the outside so we want to put pieces of decorative leather over the stitched ends. And the pegs need one more layer of varnish.

After that I finally have time to finish some smaller projects: varnishing the mirror-hangers that I made (pieces of CD with a clay frame) and finish my dagger sheath. I hope we'll be able to start packing tomorrow evening. This evening we have an EE meeting, yesterday we had a meeting with the Ern. We're planning on leaving early Friday morning.