Party All the Time

We have been living it up at the Cape of Dreams this weekend, celebrating the mothers in our lives. We invited my mother, her husband, my brothers and sister in law to spend the weekend with us. Then, we decided to go all out and invite a bunch of friends as well. It was a blast but a lot of work. In the end, the work was worth the fun we had, especially for my mother. It was her day after all.

Last week, we began cleaning the house and finishing projects that we had been putting off. I was mostly in charge of the cleaning, while Douglas did things such as clean out spaces in the basement for air mattresses and hook up the pipes and filtration system for the refrigerator water and ice. The basement is slowly looking better. You may remember it from my post about “My Big Dirty Secret.” It has been a huge embarrassment to us both, but slowly we are finding places for things and cleaning it out. I am pleased that there is now room for people to sleep on a blow-up mattress when the guest room is in use.

Saturday morning there was one last flurry of activity as we prepared for a deluge of people. Everyone was put to work. My brother Justin put a piece in the doorway that has been missing since we re-tiled the kitchen floor.

Laura, my sister in law, and I chopped veggies for salads and appetizers.

Douglas, my brothers and cousin Matt put up the tents.

We borrowed one tent from my mother and the other from the school where we work. We really should purchase one of these for ourselves. They are easy to put up, and they really saved us that day.

On Saturday, it rained. The forecast originally had said that we would have rain Wednesday-Friday, but that Saturday would be clear. The closer we got to the event, however, the worse the forecast was, telling us to expect afternoon thunder showers the day of the party. Saturday morning was clear, and we dared to hope only to have those hopes dashed as the rain arrived with the first guests. Luckily, it did not rain as hard as it could have, and there was only thunder and lightning once. Everyone cozied up to each other under the tent, and no one complained about the tight quarters. In fact, although we had the two tents, everyone stayed all together under the one.

My approach to throwing a party is laid-back. You will not see many decorations or themes at my get-togethers. I do not have fancy food or elaborate ways to serve the food I have. I do not have the time to prepare more than the basics when I am working, nor do I want to spend the whole party in the kitchen.

My theory is that if you have interesting friends, good food and abundant alcohol everyone will have a good time regardless of whether everything was color-coordinated or not. That is not to knock the people that do those things. I am in awe of people that have enough time to work and throw perfectly decorated parties. I just accept that I am not one of them. So, if you are looking for party design ideas, you can stop reading now. This was as decorated as it got. I was pleased to use one of my African baskets.

Despite the lack of sophistication, everyone seemed to have a great time.

For the party, we brought the table out of the kitchen and put it under one of the tents. I found it in the trash last summer. You can read the story in the post Curb Sale Finds. We needed it because Douglas and I do not have a lot of outdoor furniture. He had this table and chairs from before we got married. It was under the other tent. I was sad that I could not put up the hammock since it was raining.

I will give you one secret to a successful party. Cook with charcoal. Food has so much more flavor when it is cooked with wood versus gas. I understand that gas is much more convenient, but people will RAVE about your food if you cook with charcoal. Douglas did a great job with the grilling, which lead to many jokes about how much everyone loves Douglas’ meat. We are an immature group; what can I say? There also may or may not have been jokes about the pepper pistachios (hot nuts) we served as well. I will leave it to your imagination.

Another thing that makes me happy is that very little went into the landfill. We used no paper products at all, so really the only thing that was thrown out was packaging. We even have a compost for the table scraps. We have lots of silverware and dishes since we each had a set and spares before we got married. We also have a plethora of cloth napkins. I had many and then bought about fifty at a garage sale last summer for a couple of dollars. The only problem was that people kept forgetting which glass was theirs, so we had to keep washing the glasses. The dishwasher worked overtime. We decided that at the next party we are going to have a grease pencil available for people to write their name on their glass.

The party rocked on until the last people collapsed at three in the morning. As you can imagine, we slept late the next morning. My brother Jeremy really wanted to go to a Met game that day, but he was not successful in getting everyone else motivated. We spent Mother’s Day lazing about the back yard and eating the leftover food. It was sunny that day, and the hammock finally made an appearance.

The kids from next door kept sneaking over- despite their father’s warnings to stay away. He will not believe me that I do not mind their company.

It was a beautifully relaxing day, and my mother was able to enjoy it with three of her four children. Perfection!

Overall, I think that the party was a great success. We will have to have another one soon.

Happy Homemaking!

P.S. Today I connected a post with Victoria’s Made With Love link-up party. I was too busy preparing for the party to make anything last week, but I did make Douglas a Coat Rack/Metal Display a few years ago while we were dating and not yet married. Go to her page to check out what other people made.