Saturday night recap

So last night I had a little party ... about 16 people came over. If you didn't get an invite, it was because it was for a very specific group of people, or you don't know the right people. :) It was fun!

At first everyone stood around the food table. They were all chatting, of course, in a way that gladdened by little hostess-heart; however there was lots of seating that was just looking lost and lonely, and I did feel some anxiety that my guests might become fatigued standing all evening. But the food was pretty good, and I think it's just natural for people to stand around the food (or congregate in the kitchen) at parties.

For the foodies in my reading audience, we had:

• lots of dips with crackers and slices of multigrain bread,
• lots of cheeses (there was a pre-fab cheese plate that I bought at a grocery store that in all honesty wasn't all that good [too oily - so I didn't mind when some of it was given to Milo], but I also bought some tasty dill-flavoured havarti and some other kind of goat cheese flavoured with blueberries and cinnamon that tasted like heaven!),
• a fruit cake,
• some yummy store-bought cream puffs,
• some delicious naan bread,
• tortilla chips + salsa + guacamole
• baby carrots and cucumber slices
  

Here are Perkin and Melanie chatting over some chocolate bread (!!!) brought by my culinary idol, Tania:


My parents just called and when I told them that I'd hosted a party for 16 people, their first question was, "And you didn't serve them any meat???" Uh, no. Was that a requirement??? :)

I ended up with an amazing amount of leftover booze, considering it was BYOB. Weird. Shannon brought me a bottle of wine in a fabric gift bag so beautiful that I am seriously tempted to hoard it forever in a dresser drawer or something rather than re-use it and give it away to someone else:


Here are Steph, Elliot, and Natalie as I disrupt their pleasant conversation with my camera for the sake of this blog:


From left to right: Jason, Lillian (yes, the Lillian who occasionally comments on this blog! Hi Lillian!!!), Pia, Grace Kelly, Shannon, and Jenn.


Finally around 10:30 or so, people started feeling confident that they weren't going to get stuck in a dead-end conversation and started sitting on the couch and chairs. Either that or they just gave up from exhaustion. :)

In the photo below: Are they laughing at something Elliot's said? (E. is off-camera to the left.) Or at Perkin's rebuttal? Verdict: Both.

(L-r: Lillian, Jenn, Jo, Tania (behind Perkin's hand), Perkin, Natalie, Melanie, Vitaly, Jason)

In the next photo: Perkin, Natalie, Melanie, Vitally, Jason, and a very pink Matt. (Dude, wear sunscreen!! One day you're gonna look like a raisin! And no, there won't be anything "distinguished-looking" about it at all!) :)


Same cast of characters, with one addition: Milo!


The canine of the evening:

Cheese, Mama? Cheese???

We laughed a LOT.


So I know there will be a few people who will inevitably ask how my cats dealt with the invasion of so many people (and one miniature Dachshund) into their environment. Well, they hid in my bedroom, mostly, and they were somewhat rattled. This morning as I ran my Roomba to pick up all the crumbs left around the kitchen table, both cats acted highly aggrieved, as if to say, When will all this disturbance END???? What can I say? Cats have delicate nerves. They've strapped on their eyemasks and slipped on their terrycloth robes for an afternoon recovery nap. They'll be all right.

Some lessons from the evening:

• You can never put out enough tasty cheese or guacamole;
• Every party should have some element of chocolate;
  
• I am so lucky to have such cool people to invite into my home for the evening.