I love throwing seasonal events and am always looking for an excuse to do so. My last major event was last Beltane: Camp Hobbit. It tested my planning and creation abilities, as well as my patience.
The theme was “Hobbit” and “Beltane”, which wasn’t hard to thread together. Berries, breads, meats and cheeses were the underpinning branches of the menu when I was building it. I planned a menu for three days and two nights, made everything I could that would survive being made ahead and then created group cooking cards to delegate the cooking to the other campers whilst we were there.
I made a “program” for the camp that I gave out in “goodie bags”. Each goodie bag had a tote, notebook, pen, camp booklet, sanitiser, pack of tissues, smores kits and an extendable marshmallow fork. I forgot to take photos of these though (^_^;)
Food Photo Book
The grocery shop 
Potato and leek soup on the stove 
Mess 
More mess 
Adventure book with the camp recipes 
Hand whipped cream (hardest part of the cooking day) 
Baked lemon poppyseed cake 
Whipped cream icing on the cake (I dropped the cake on the way to the fridge and had to make another) 
Ingredients being prepared 
Scones ready on the tray 
Raising my first bread rolls 
Getting ready for Danishes 
Danishes ready to go 
Herbed potato rolls done 
Danishes done 
Scones in the oven 
Scones out of the oven 
Dill potato salad 
Prepping the veggies for the campfire 
Campfire veggies prepped 
Lamb chops prepped 
Made mint pesto (almost as painful as whipping cream) 
Ingredients for the loaded veggie quiche 
Quiche pastry (didn’t want to spend time making the pastry this time) 
Making the quiche 
Quiche baked and blueberry pie going in 
Blueberry pie in oven (it sadly didn’t turn out well)
Activities Photo Book
Ideas for Next Camp
I’ve been working on ideas for the next camp, tweaking it this time to occur in the warmer month of winter so that we can avoid the Queensland summer this time and really enjoy the campfire licking at us rather than a thousand flies.
I have a theme in mind but it’s a secret for now ₍₍⚞(˶˃ ᵕ ˂˶)⚟⁾⁾
Planning an Event
I go through four phases when I plan an event:
- Storming: letting myself run away with the ideas
- Drafting: whittling down the ideas to something reasonable and realistic, balancing engagement and shifting workload
- Planning: laying out the timeline of work needed to be done for the event, building guides to help with these
- Doing: running the event!
Guides are my best friend. They help me remember everything and planning ahead means that I get less flustered as I often bite off way more than I can chew when throwing an event, which is why #2 is so important now. To help everyone feel like they were contributing and take some of the load off of me for this camp, I had everyone submit a trivia topic of their own and do all of the at-camp cooking.
You can check out my camp companion here if you’re interested. It shows how I built the camp and prepared for it and also has a breakdown of the recipes and trivia. I had a bunch of other guides to help me and my adventure book has all of the recipes and notes.
Recipe List
Sweet
Lemon Poppyseed Cake (Healthy Life Trainer)
Blueberry Pie (In Bloom Bakery)
Scones (Recipe Tin Eats)
Berry Cream Danish (The Hungry Goddess)
Savoury
Dill Potato Salad (Moon and Spoon and Yum)
Potato & Leek Soup (Woolworths)
Loaded Vegetarian Quiche (All Recipes)
Campfire Roasted Veggies (Live Eat Learn)
Herbed Potato Rolls (Rhubarb & Lavender)
Grilled Chops with Mint Pesto (Rhubarb & Lavender)
We got rained out by a sudden storm with winds that collapsed one tent and slightly flooded another. Though the night ended with everyone and everything wet and muddy, what we did complete of Camp Hobbit was a great time!
We stayed at Berrima Farmstay: https://www.berrimacamping.com/
Hopfield is Writing 
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