I mentioned a couple of posts ago that we had a Dharma-themed ‘party’ for Dave’s birthday. I use the word ‘party’ pretty loosely since it was a rather intimate group – Dave’s not really into big parties. Sunday night we invited one of Dave’s good friends over. We visited, had dinner, sang, had Dave open gifts, and worked on the LOST puzzle he got (I forgot to take pictures that night)… but it was great fun!! I found a place online where I could download Dharma food labels… I modified them in PhotoShop and we had Dharma Dr. Pepper, Dharma Vanilla Coke, Dharma Sprite, and Dharma Strawberry Soda as our drinks to go along with the meal. It was kind of fun to see those labels on the cans.

Monday we finished the LOST puzzle, sang, and ate the Dharma cake. This time I took some pictures.

This is Dave working on the LOST puzzle. The puzzle is 1000 pieces, and quite tricky. The final picture is not on the box, so that added to the difficulty. It took 2-3 adults about 12 hours to finish! So we figure it would take a single person around 30 hours. Wow. I’m surprised we actually got it done. Seriously though, it was a pretty impressive puzzle.
FYI, this is Puzzle #1 of 4 in a series of LOST puzzles, it was titled “The Hatch”… Apparently you can build all four puzzles to get some secret message on the back. (I don’t imagine we’ll try that anytime soon though).

Here are a couple examples of the Dharma labels. I modified the ‘Dharma Beer’ can label for the pop and came up with the Ranch on my own, since I couldn’t find that one to download.
Here are a couple of Dharma label links:
– The Knight Shift: We’re Ready to Party with Dharma food (this is the place I downloaded them from).
– StumbleUpon WebToolbar: Max Pictures’ Blather
– Then there’s Insanely Great News – I think they started it all, but then they were told to take the labels down.

P.S. The Dharma Ranch is actually an old pickle Jar. I spray painted the lid, and filled the inside with spices and rubberized roofing cement. Its not perfect – but it gives the illusion of Dharma Ranch. The pop can was also spray painted white. Then labels applied to both. Yes. I am a nerd.

This is me working with the fondant for the logo on the cake. It was my first time making/using fondant. I think it turned out pretty well!

Its not exactly Ace of Cakes, but I was pretty pleased with myself. But it kind of took a long time. I imagine I’ll get faster at fondant as I get practice.

We just did one candle. We’ll save the massive number of candles for his next birthday (30 years).

It was carrot cake, by the way. YUM! I posted the recipe for the carrot cake and the fondant on my food blog. Check it out if you’d like.
(I actually found a recipe for a marshmallow fondant on a friend’s blog and tried adapting it to add a cream cheese flavor – it was pretty easy, and tasted pretty good too).

All we were missing were some Dharma jumpsuits and some ’70’s hairstyles. We had a pretty good time though!

Hello, my name is Tina, and I’m a LOST-ie. And so is my husband. And my daughter.
I’m not in denial.

Last, but not least, I just wanted to note that even though I made up my own ‘Dharma Ranch’ I would still welcome an autographed jar of the stuff. 🙂

Check out this video, where a fan gets Dharma Ranch (though I doubt its autographed):
http://video.aol.com/video-detail/lost-comic-con-panel-fan-wins-dharma-ranch-dressing-part-8-of-10/2528204095