Echo's Underwater Tea Party

For Echo's Birthday this year she requested a mermaid themed tea party. It was fun to have a chance to get creative with a smaller party at home. Here's how it all came together.

We made homemade decorations mostly out of Echo's mermaid craft book. The girls helped me to make mermaid banners and mermaid crowns for each of the party guests. I decorated the table with fish nets from the craft store, sea shells and lace doilies as well as a vintage teapot.

For snacks we served goldfish crackers, fruit kabobs, starfish crackers (Ritz crackers with sliced cheese cut out in the shape of a star with a cookie cutter) and mermaid toast (cinnamon raisin bread toasted with cream cheese on top, the swirled with green and blue food coloring and topped with gold sprinkles), and of course a fabulous mermaid birthday cake! Echo requested a plum cake with mermaid decorations, I don't know where the plum cake idea came from but it turned out pretty well!

For a party favor and activity the guests painted small wooden treasure chests.

Echo got this sweet mermaid tail blanket as one of her presents. Overall it was a lovely party and sweet day with friends!

Christmas Cheer and a Recipe for Spiced Cider

Echo helping decorate the tree

This past weekend we had our (semi) annual Christmas party and it was a great success! As usual I didn't take a enough pictures but here are a couple of our tree and then a few shots from the party.

The finished tree

We opted for a smaller tree we could put up on a table top this year to keep Echo from pulling it over or otherwise making mischief with it. The result was still pretty satisfying, almost as good as having a big tree.

I had been looking forward to this party for months, it's such a great chance to catch up with friends and see people that I don't see enough of. There were lots of babies in attendance this year which made it even more fun. I can see how much better it's going to get when they are old enough to play charades with us and participate in the white elephant. Having kids around at Christmas makes it so much more magical.

We played apples to apples (which I haven't done in ages) as well as our other standard party games and had a great time eating and drinking hot cider while we relaxed by the fire. Echo wanted to help play cards with us and was in to everyone's hands.

I wish i had gotten pictures of our food and drink spread which was pretty fantastic this year but I got busy hosting and forgot. This year I made my own spiced cider and wanted to record the recipe for posterity. Here's how I did it.

ingredients
2 bottles of plain apple juice
1 tbs brown sugar
1 tbs molasses
3 cinnamon sticks
2 tsp whole allspice
2 tsp whole cloves
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1 orange rind

All you have to do to make this yummy spiced cider is put it in the crock pot on low for 6 hours and enjoy hot! I also had some cold the next day and it was delicious as well.

Thanks so much to my party guests for coming, it is always such a pleasure to catch up with everyone and get to celebrate the season with some of my favorite people!

How to Host a Beer Tasting Party

This year my husband Eric turned 30! Eric isn't typically that excited about Birthdays but I absolutely LOVE them. Any excuse to celebrate is ok by me and having given birth to someone myself I now realize how truly worthy of celebration Birthdays really are. I wanted to do something fun and different to mark the occasion, you only turn 30 once after all. I decided on a beer tasting party as a fun way to get some friends together and party. Here's how it came together.

The Drinks: We asked everyone to bring a favorite craft beer to share and picked up a few of our own favorites to get the party started. We ended up with a great selection and everyone had fun trying different flavors. Since I knew a few of our guests wouldn't want to drink beer I told them it was ok to bring hard cider too, it's bending the rules a bit but it was worth it to make everyone happy :-) We also provided beer tasting score sheets to encourage guests to try and discuss the different beers. We downloaded these great free printables for beer tasting here.

 The Food: My favorite part of any party is the food of course! We tried to stick mostly to salty pub fare that we knew would go great with beer. Here's what was on the menu.

A meat pie party tray from our beloved Australian Bakery in Marietta. We got half steak and pepper pies and and half barbecue chicken pies.

A meat and cheese tray courtesy of my family.

Garlic and herb popcorn.

Soft pretzels with a variety of different mustards for dipping

Potato chips and peanuts

Spiced Guinness brownies for dessert

The Decorations: Not too much in the way of decorations but we did have some lovely flowers brought by family and friends. We also served the beer in small mason jars and served food on wooden trays and bowls for a rustic feel.

The Music: Pandora Irish Pub station, to put everyone in a drinking mood ;-)

Unfortunately this is about the only picture I got of the party, too busy playing hostess and running after my extremely fast crawling baby. 

It ended up being a great low key kind of evening which was perfect since there were babies in attendance. All in all I think it was a wonderful theme for a 30th Birthday party, maybe I'll do one again next year when I turn 30 :-)

Joanna's Bridal Shower

I haven't ever had the opportunity to be in a wedding before so when Joanna (one of my besties) asked me to be in her wedding this Fall I was thrilled! Of course things were complicated shortly thereafter by my getting pregnant (and due right around her wedding date). Nevertheless I am happy to have the opportunity to be there for a good friend and while I still plan to be in the wedding (assuming I'm not actually in labor that day) I wanted to do something special for Joanna just in case it doesn't work out. As one of the only local bridesmaids I offered to host the shower at my house. This is a relatively new thing for me, I have helped throw a lingerie shower/bachelorette party for an out of town friend before but hosting it at your own house is a little different. Hosting a shower is lot more pressure than having a regular party for some reason, you want it to be just perfect! I enlisted the help of the only other local bridesmaid and we decided to throw Joanna a kitchen themed shower since she is such a foodie. All in all I think it was a big hit! It was fun getting everyone together and I love that our house is such an easy place to entertain in. Congratulations Joanna, can't wait for your big day in September!

Decorations made from photos I've taken of Adam and Joanna and crepe paper

Gorgeous flowers from the Marietta farmers market

The spread of food

Handmade favors, honey butter glazed popcorn

Pretty presents and paper lanterns made by Sarah, the other in town bridesmaid

People starting to arrive

The fabulous veil and hat made from the ribbons off of the presents.

Group shot!

Westley stole a cupcake after everyone left.

2011 Holiday Party

We saw a return of our annual holiday party this year and it was a blast! It was wonderful having everyone over and getting to spend time with friends and family. The menu was cranberry gin fizzes, Logan's port punch, beer and wine, pear and brie crostinis, pecan blue cheese logs, olive and rosemary wreath, cranberry feta pinwheels, chocolate chip cookies and assorted chips and dips. Party games included white elephant, the ministers cat, holiday charades and apples to apples of course :-) Here are some pictures,

Cranberry gin fizz

Rosemary olive wreath

A good time was had by all, can't wait to do it again next year :-)

Rustic Modern Thanksgiving

 HOsting our first real Thanksgiving was a huge success! The food turned out delicious and everything was lovely. All I can say is we couldn't be more thankful :-)

Centerpiece and table runner, this is before we rearranged the furniture to accommodate everyone.

awwww...

Family enjoying Logan's punch that he brought.

                       

                         

Fridge the night before Thanksgiving. The turkey is brining in that big metal bucket.

Fridge after the Thanksgiving meal, so glad I bought new tupperware before this  holiday!

My plate, full of brined turkey, hash brown casarole, sweet potato casserole,  Mom's cornbread and  sausage dressing, grape, pecan and goat cheese salad and cranberry orange relish.

My famous butternut squash soup and a cheesy corn biscuit.

The most beautiful turkey ever :-)

Pecan, grape and goat cheese salad with balsamic vinaigrette. 

Eric carving a turkey for the first time

Logan's grapefruit pie with candies grapefruit peel on top.

We set up two tables put together (making one long table) in the living room where we are dinner. We set up an extra table in the dining room to use as a buffet to hold all the food.

Lots of wine was consumed

We got to use our wedding tablecloths, napkins and wine glasses as well as using the dishes and flatware we received as wedding gifts.

top view of the Thanksgiving table.

 This is what the menu ended up like, I've linked all the recipes that I can in this list :-)

Brined Turkey, Sweet Potato Casserole, Cheesy Corn Biscuits, My Mom's Amazing Cornbread and Sausage Dressing,  Goat Cheese, Grape and Pecan Salad, Hashbrown Casserole , Fruit Salad brought by my mother in law Jody, Cranberry Orange Relish, Butternut Squash Soup, Apple Bourbon Pie, brought by my mom, Grapefruit Pie, brought by Logan, Pumpkin Pie, brought by Jody, and Oreo Cheesecake brought by my parents.

Now all we have to do is try to recover from our food comas and enjoy our leftovers as the weekend goes on :-)