Last weekend we celebrated my awesome sister in law, Lindsay's birthday with a little dinner party at our house. She and I both love to have people over for a home cooked meal, and I was thrilled to pull out all the stops to make it a special dinner for her.
On a normal day--let's just be honest here-- we use our basic plates, eat in front of the TV, and half the time use paper towels for napkins. But when we have friends over for dinner Jady and I love to pull out a tablecloth, light the candles and use our fancier table settings. Why only use things like china and crystal once or twice a year? While I don't reinvent the wheel or do anything particularly creative, I like expressing through a pretty table that we're happy that you're here, and you coming to dinner makes this a special occasion.
Another element of dinner party prep that I love is choosing and arranging the flowers. Because I'm always busy grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning up the house before everyone arrives, I like to go with pretty simple, easy arrangements that aren't going to stress me out.
On a normal day--let's just be honest here-- we use our basic plates, eat in front of the TV, and half the time use paper towels for napkins. But when we have friends over for dinner Jady and I love to pull out a tablecloth, light the candles and use our fancier table settings. Why only use things like china and crystal once or twice a year? While I don't reinvent the wheel or do anything particularly creative, I like expressing through a pretty table that we're happy that you're here, and you coming to dinner makes this a special occasion.
Another element of dinner party prep that I love is choosing and arranging the flowers. Because I'm always busy grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning up the house before everyone arrives, I like to go with pretty simple, easy arrangements that aren't going to stress me out.
I happened to know that Lindsay loves the combination of pale pink and bright green, so while at Trader Joe's I picked up a bunch of stargazer lilies, some pink roses and a few hydrangeas in a fresh chartreuse. At home I soaked a foam oasis in water for a few minutes before positioning it in a silver bowl and cutting and sticking in each stem.
The flowers looked lovely all night, but on day two I noticed that two of the three hydrangeas had already begun drooping, and before long they had totally given out. Ugh, what is the deal? I'm clearly doing something wrong, since I have only a 50/50 record with keeping hydrangeas alive for very long. I clearly need a tutorial from Mel, the flower whisperer, 'cause this is just sad:
Desserts are usually something that I personally like to delegate or buy for dinner parties, since I prefer to spend my time on other areas, and birthday cakes I definitely leave to the professionals. While I *can* bake, I like to keep events like this fun for myself (so that I'll be excited to do them again), and that involves learning what I want to tackle and what to outsource. How fun is this polka dotted birthday cake? I definitely made the right decision with this one, and I was able to enjoy the night along with everyone else.
Happy partying!
xo
Liza
I am in love with these fabulous flower decorations for the dinner party. The entire work had been done fantastically and I would love to use these ideas in my friend’s bachelorette bash. Would love to buy these pink blooms from my favorite online San Francisco Florist.
ReplyDeleteI have huge craze about flowers and would love to go for these flowers today from Bangalore Florist in my area and go for similar pink flowers for my beautiful wife today.
ReplyDelete