Another good (and busy!) weekend in Portland. On Saturday, we went to the Screenprinting for Change party that I mentioned earlier, and we had a great time! I need to get more involved in the Portland craft scene. Maybe it'll inspire me to start making things again, plus it's full of awesome crafty women. Click on the picture for lots more.

We printed two shirts and a tiny Obama pennant, which is now on our front porch. It's so festive!

Prior to the party, I spent most of my morning baking--first Cook's Illustrated blondies (no coconut in mine, and only 1 tsp vanilla) for the screenprinting party, and then an apple-quince pie for Marissa's "3"-themed birthday party that evening. I had poached the quinces earlier using the recipe in Chez Panisse Fruit, and then I made pie dough using Shuna's recipe and the pie filling per this recipe. I think it turned out well, though I wouldn't say it's the best pie I've ever made. It was well received though. We had a good time at the party, and we met a bunch of new people who we'll hopefully get to see again in the future.

On Sunday, we drove down to Salem (about an hour south of Portland) to visit EZ Orchards' Harvestfest, which appeared to offer the most orchard-going fun in one place. It didn't disappoint. We ate delicious sausage, went on a hay ride, got lost in the Corn Oregon corn maze (and learned a little bit about Oregon along the way), looked at the pumpkin patch, watched some old-timey reenactments, petted some farm animals, and drank apple cider and ate apple cider donuts (our first ever!) while watching a bluegrass band. Phew! I'm glad we went.

Since we were already down south and the day was still young, we decided to go check out Silver Falls State Park, which was about half an hour away. We ended up hiking for about 2.5 hours and seeing maybe six of the ten waterfalls. It was a little brisk, but it was so relaxing being out in nature, and the falls were pretty. The hike had some uphill parts, but nothing too bad.

In unrelated news, we have been experiencing some strange (but thankfully short-lived) bug invasions in the past week. About a week ago, Patrick was working on the storm windows in the basement, and he lifted a cardboard box away from the wall, and a bunch of house centipedes scurried out. Ewww! He thought he had gotten them all, but later that evening, a big one skittered across our living room floor. And then a day after that, a baby centipede ran across my desk while I was working. How very unsettling! Luckily, we haven't seen any more since then.

The centipede invasion was followed by a 5-hour-long ladybug epidemic (apparently not such an unusual occurrence). The weather was perfectly warm one day last week, and around lunchtime the south side of our house was suddenly crawling with ladybugs. They're not so cute en masse. Also, our 100-year-old house is full of cracks and holes, so some of the ladybugs crawled inside and started wandering around our stairwell and our bathroom. They pretty much disappeared by nightfall, but we have still seen a couple hanging around on our ceilings. Oh well, of all the bugs to invade our house, I suppose ladybugs are the best. Patrick read that we're supposed to catch them and keep them in our fridge until spring, but I don't really want ladybugs in my refrigerator all winter.