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Ugly Christmas Party 2017

11/16/2017

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Break out those Ugly Christmas Sweaters or Pajamas and come on over to Kroeger Schloss.  Or, show everyone how hip you are and get one of those fancy new Christmas Rompers! Whatever you wear, make it Christmassy and make it Ugly!

As always, we'll have food and drink available, but you can feel free to bring your own as well. Kids are welcome, but childcare isn't provided - so bring the littles at your own risk!
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The party will start at around 6:00. Bring a gift for the White Elephant Gift Exchange at 8:00 followed by awards given for the Ugliest Christmas get-up of the night!

    Ugly Christmas Party 2017

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A Wild One!  Quinn's First Birthday

8/30/2017

 
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    A Wild One!  Quinn's First Birthday
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Ugly Christmas Party 2015

11/14/2015

 
​Ugly Christmas Sweaters have made way for Christmas Pajamas and, now, this year's trend is Ugly Christmas Suits!  At Kroeger Schloss, we're lovers of all ugly Christmas trends, so break out your sweaters, or PJs, or suits and join us at Kroeger Schloss for our annual Christmas Party.
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As always, a crowd vote will award prizes for the best, err ugliest, Christmas attire, and we'll be doing a White Elephant Gift Exchange as well.

The party will be on Saturday, December 5th and we'll get started at around 6:30 pm, with the White Elephant Gift Exchange to start at 8:30 pm.  RSVP below to let us know if you can make it so we can be sure to have food and drinks for all!

    Ugly Christmas Party 2015

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Shuffleboard House Rules

10/18/2015

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We got a shuffleboard table for Christmas last year and we love it!  We immediately set it up and invited everyone over to play.  What we quickly discovered, however, is that shuffleboard is very similar to pool, or darts, or cornhole, or any of a number of other games.  What possible similarity could exist between all these games?  Simple, with all these games, each bar, or backyard, or locale has their own slightly different set of rules.  Shuffleboard is no different.  And, now that we have shuffleboard at our house, we needed to establish our house rules!

We decided that a cool, funky, graphically-interesting chalkboard with our chosen rules would be the way to go.  We'd hang it on the wall over the table and the result would be the bee's knees!  So, in mid-May I embarked on creating our perfect custom house rules chalkboard.  In mid-October I finished.  Follow the simple steps below to make your own:
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STEP 1: Select your chalkboard

This was easy enough.  We found a weathered-wood chalkboard from someone on Etsy.  When it arrived, my suspicions were confirmed: I easily could have made this myself with some backer-board, chalkboard paint, and an old wood pallet.  I would later find out that the total scope of work involved meant that it was probably a good thing that I took the easy way out on this step.
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STEP 2: Create your design/ layout

This step was a lot of fun for me.  I integrated the Kroeger Schloss logo along with a variety of fonts that I sourced from across the internet.  Finding a set of rules that would work was easy.  Distilling them down to the minimum number of characters (so as to minimize my work!) was a bit more difficult.  In the end, the rules and their phrasing came out great and I really think the overall design and layout has the look we were after as well.
STEP 3: Transfer the outline of your design to the chalkboard

Let the tedium begin!  Each picture here represents an hour or two of work.  I procured a meeting projector from the office and used it to project my final design from my computer onto the chalkboard.  The challenge here was that I knew I wouldn't be able to finish the outline in one sitting (I didn't, however, know it would take closer to 8 hours!).  However, I needed to set everything up in a place where I could leave it until I was done.  Otherwise, the design would get wonky because it's size and orientation would change drastically as a result of tiny differences in the angle the chalkboard was sitting at or how far away from the projector it was. ​
 STEP 4: Fill in the outline

Let the tedium continue!  Each picture still represents an hour or two of work.  Thankfully, I no longer needed the projector, so I would work on this step during the evenings on the couch with the TV and/or family there to keep me company.  During the outline phase, I had quickly learned that traditional chalk wouldn't work - there was no way to keep a point long enough for any of the details in the various fonts.  Instead of traditional chalk, I bought a two-pack of white charcoal pencils from Michael's Craft Store.  Before all was said and done, I went through 4 two-packs: 8 pencils in all.  The other tip I have to share here is one I learned from the internet: dip your pencil or chalk in water to create a solid fill.  This also brightens up the final result.
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 STEP 5: Lock it in!

Let's be honest - the chalkboard look is more about aesthetics than function.  At least for me it is...  After spending over 20 hours carefully transferring the design to the chalkboard and filling it in, I don't need the ability to erase it and add something else, thank you very much.  At the same time, the matte look of the finished product is part of the overall look I was going for.  The solution was a few thin coats of spray on matte finish polyurethane... after masking off the wood frame, of course. 
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 And finally, STEP 6: Hang it on the wall

Okay, maybe this doesn't qualify as a "step" per say, but I'm adding it anyway.  We also added a thin brick veneer to the wall to warm-up the look of the room.  This is the final product. 
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Christmas Pajama Party!

11/20/2014

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It's that time of year again.  The time to stare doe-eyed at the calendar in shocked amazement as each and every waking moment of free time is rapidly consumed and blocked off.  Work parties, crowded malls, Christmas decorations... the demands on your time are seemingly endless.  Thankfully, it's also time for the annual Kroeger Scholss Christmas Party!  Finally, something during the holiday season that you WANT to do!
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We're mixing it up a bit this year.  The ugly sweater trend has exploded and is now more popular than Cabbage Patch Kids, Pokemon, and Twilight movies ever were.  Here at Kroeger Schloss, we like to stay ahead of the trends.  So, we're taking Ugly Christmas Sweater Parties to the next level - enter the Christmas Pajama Party!  Of course, ugly sweaters are still welcome, but if you'd prefer to slip into something a little more comfortable, step into your fleece footy PJs and come on by!

Prizes will be given for the Ugliest Sweater AND the best Christmas Pajamas, so do it up right!  We'll get the party started at around 6:30 and keep it going until the Elf on the Shelf starts writing a negative review for Santa.

If you can make it, we'd love to have you.  Either way, please fill out the RSVP form below:

    So... whaddaya say?

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Vote for Carson!

11/14/2014

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Okay, so we've got good news for you and bad news...

We'll start with the bad news and just get that out of the way off the top: it's an overly-cumbersome pain in the neck!

Now for the good news: for everyone who appreciates just how incredibly adorable Carson is, you now have an opportunity to put that belief into motion!  Plenty of you have commented that Carson should be a Gerber baby and we agree.  Now, we all have the opportunity to band together to convince Gerber that he should be a Gerber baby!  That's right, Gerber is having an online contest to find the most adorable kids they can.  We've entered Carson into the contest and HE NEEDS YOUR VOTES!  The voting period starts November 17th and runs through December 14th.  You can vote as often as you like, which means you should probably spend all day every day voting for Carson... Waiting in line on Black Friday?  Vote for Carson.  Listing to some executive drone on and on during some boring conference call at work?  Vote for Carson.  Waiting for that turkey to roast?  Vote for Carson.  Not sleeping?  Vote for Carson.  Asleep?  Vote for Carson in your sleep!

You can check the Kroeger Schloss Facebook page or Kelly's or Matt's for the link.  Or you can click here, then search for Entry ID 50200 (that's Carson):
VOTE FOR CARSON!
Full disclosure here... before you click that link to go vote, remember the bad news.  For whatever reason, Gerber decided to make the voting process incredibly cumbersome.  You have to register and create an account and whatnot.  It's completely stupid, but probably serves to keep the total number of votes down.  Thankfully, you only need to register once and you just login thereafter.  Since you'll be voting so many times each and every day, you should probably just bookmark the voting page and have your browser remember your login credentials.

Happy voting!  Here's to the next Gerber baby!
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