Grownup Party

Three days and counting!!

I had such a really fabulously fun time on Friday night, and I really want to relive the whole thing and meander through it and give you every little detail. But I have three more days, and I want to knock out a couple more items on this list tonight, so I'm going to force myself to be brief. This will be a Herculean effort, and I hope you appreciate it.


On Friday night Mark threw me a birthday party here at the house. We decided to make it a low-key event...just a few friends and some takeout food. I, however, am unable to leave such a thing alone. Therefore, when I say Mark threw me a party, what I mean is that he had the idea, he began the execution of it, and then he graciously didn't fight me when I stuck my nose in and started doing things, but instead worked hard at carrying out my various schemes.

I'm an expert at over-complicating things, but this time I think it actually worked in my favor.

My amazing in-laws agreed to take our kids overnight, so we were child-free. Child-free! I had a grownup party!! Don't get me wrong. I love my kids, and I love to celebrate with them. But I can't tell you how long it's been since I hosted an event without having to think about chicken nuggets or juice boxes or waking up sleeping children.

Free from the need to kid-proof the house, I gathered inexpensive glass containers from thrift stores, popped candles in them, and placed them all over the house. We augmented them with several strands of Christmas lights (white, unblinking...I am unyielding on this point) draped across curtain rods, banisters, and furniture. And a couple of times I actually did a happy little dance because the house looked so glimmery and great.



Note: if you were here on Friday and have better pictures...or any pictures, really...please send them my way. I'm posting literally everything I have here.

"Some takeout food" became "Asian fusion". We ordered from a Chinese place, an Indian place, and a Thai place. EVERYTHING was yummy, which was good, because I honestly didn't know what half of it was going to be when I ordered it. There was too much, especially because my friend Sara, whom I love, brought enough naan (Indian bread) to feed the entire population of Mumbai. We ate a lot of Asian food.

Oh, and there were grownup drinks there! That's a first for us. Kind of funny that we served our very first alcohol at my birthday party, seeing as I don't drink it at all ever. (Not because I have a moral objection to it--just because I stink at moderation, so alcohol seems like a bad idea for me.) But Mark loves Mike's Hard Lemonade and its variants, so we had a little cooler of those. I found their presence sort of satisfying primarily because they were so very not juice boxes.

Then...THEN...came dessert. Common sense would have dictated that I should just enjoy the party and let my husband buy a birthday cake from a local bakery. Common sense, however, is sometimes not a strength of mine. Especially when pitted against recipes like these.

We started with a hot cocoa bar. I used a from-scratch cocoa recipe (substituted vanilla extract for the vanilla bean) that turned out really fabulous...rich and creamy and not over-sweet, which was good considering what came next. There was a little spot in the kitchen stocked with the following things to doctor up your cocoa:

• mini chocolate chips
• butterscotch chips
• chopped dark chocolate
• chopped white chocolate
• chopped dark chocolate with chili peppers
• crushed peppermint candies
• homemade marshmallows (fun, though kind of time-consuming)
• vanilla syrup
• hazelnut syrup
• caramel syrup
• cinnamon
• cayenne pepper (for Mexican hot chocolate)
• cinnamon sticks
• candy canes
• peppermint schnapps
• whipped cream
• homemade cinnamon whipped cream
• sprinkles
• pirouline cookies

I think that's it. People came up with some really outstanding combinations. My own personal concoction was cocoa with crushed peppermints, white chocolate, and vanilla syrup stirred in, topped with whipped cream, which: wow.

To complement the cocoa I made cinnamon vanilla cupcakes (a wedding cupcake recipe filled with cinnamon whipped cream and topped with cinnamon-vanilla frosting). I also tried a recipe I've had bookmarked for a while, called "Knock You Naked Brownies." To my knowledge no one actually disrobed, but the brownies were indeed ridiculous in the best kind of way. I left out the nuts and added a little sea salt on the caramel layer. I'll go easier on the salt next time, but they were still outrageous.


We had about twenty people, I think. (I wish we could have fit more...there are a bunch more I wanted to invite, but our house isn't all that big...) I was worried that people would be bored, as I wasn't really providing anything to DO besides come up with creative ways to ingest calories. But people seemed to really enjoy hanging out and sampling Asian food and combining chocolates and talking and laughing.

I think my mistake was that I didn't take into account how wonderful my friends are. They're smart, funny, engaging people, and when you mix them all together, they enjoy one another. The last guests didn't leave until about 11.

I would have kept going until morning. And not because of the food, the lights, or the sugar rush: those were all wonderful but peripheral. My greatest joy is being with the people I love. So...take twenty of them and put them in my living room for the whole evening? This is like a drug to me.

I will be tucking these memories away someplace secure and special.


"Throw a dinner party" was an item on my list. I don't think I can really count this as a dinner party, seeing as dinner came directly out of plastic take-out containers. But a grownup party is kind of a first for me, and it was a blast and a stretch and all the things the list was meant to encourage. So I'm making the switch and crossing it off.

I didn't do so well at being brief here, but I'm not editing it down. I'm going to try to finish my FlyLady journal tonight and knock out the rest of the Systematic Theology chapters. And I have three verses left in Galatians 5, and the office closet is the last one, and...

Three days.