making my own napkins and loving it

once upon a time, we were all going about our lives as usual when a strange little envelope arrived in the mail.  or, in my case, arrived in my brother’s mail and had to be forwarded on to me.  anyway, the envelope came, and in it were cryptic instructions and puzzle pieces.  they were from this girl.  or was it this girl?  each set of instructions was slightly different, but mostly the same.

so we gathered, on a rainy night in west philly, to assemble puzzles and crush ice.

the puzzle was a wee bit challenging…

but we prevailed in the end.

after a bit of a flipping-over-fiasco, we were able to decode the message on the back:

(we thought that e had kept three of the pieces for herself, to remind us all of her absence, but it turned out that we had left them in kara’s envelope the whole time.  oops.)

kara tackled the lock…

and liberated the prize:

which was dried squid.

even the cat was sketched out…

in addition to the dried squid, there were cute little gifts, like keychains and tassles and funny shirts, as well as instructions to navigate ourselves to a website, where we were given instructions as to how to concoct a most delicious korean dessert known as patbingsu.

never ones to turn down a challenge, we headed to the kitchen, unpacked our previously-purchased grocery items, and got to work.

i’m not sure our patbingsu turned out exactly as it should have, but it sure was delicious.

then we watched this:

all in all, a most excellent night.