Party time, excellent.

I've been so excited to share some photos of the dinner party I held at my house last Friday. It was so lovely to reunite with my friends and share some quality conversation and lots of laughs. I was flattered by the compliments that evening - they just kept coming. In fact, I received a sweet, sweet thank you card from one of the guests, Tammy, who told me I was "a Paula Deen/Martha Stewart, but hot!" Haha! So I was pretty proud that, with a lot of help from my family and friends, I was able to pull it off... I honestly love planning parties. Can't I just do that for a living? Hm?

I am a huge sucker for bunting. You may remember the banner I made for Ethan's surprise party this summer. I made the pendants on the computer and hung them on a gold ribbon. I made the tissue paper flowers and fastened them on with wire.
The entry way.

On the menu that evening: Roquefort pear salad, garlic bread, pork tenderloin, roasted red new potatoes, roasted asparagus, peas, and mushrooms, and chocolate fondue.

I made a few of these circular pendants as well and hung them in various places. Here is the song that hung above my appetizers. Fun fact: I "made" both of those fonts!

Assorted decor.

My strong father helped me push two foldout banquet tables together to create one very large table to fit the twelve attendees. This posed problems tablecloth-wise; I had borrowed a beautiful cream-colored tablecloth from my grandmother that proved too small. My genius mother told me to stop worrying and go work on something else while she prepared a solution. When I returned, the table looked amazing. The secret: she had taken a large bed sheet of a shade similar to the tablecloth and laid it underneath. VIOLA. So smart! And I'm sure we had my guests fooled.

It was a tight squeeze, but we managed. We like to get cozy. ;]

The table runner was actually just a piece of fabric folded a couple of times to avoid sewing. I ran this beautiful purple ribbon down its length for some color anchor.

Detail shots. I put together these centerpieces myself. I took three canisters and filled them half-full with moss. I had gotten a bag of assorted pumpkins at the grocery store, but orange wasn't exactly in my color scheme. I spray-painted the orange pumpkins gold and left the gorgeous white ones untouched. I threw in some cinnamon sticks, decorative gold sprigs, and topped it off with a single paper flower. I found candles around the house to add a little visual interest to the table. I added bows or lace to each one, but disappointingly, I have no pictures. Boo!

Kirsten's place setting. Secret: my napkin rings aren't really napkin rings...

I cut up paper towel rolls and wrapped the pieces in two alternating colors of ribbons to use with my two alternating sets of cloth napkins (alas, there were too many people to use one set - but I liked it more this way, after all!).

Oh! Remember when I told you my mom had taken up metal embossing? I recruited her to help me create place cards for my table! Aren’t they lovely? Seriously.

The table all lit-up that evening.

The beverage station. Let it be known we went through five bottles of Martinelli’s Sparkling Apple Cider and only stopped because we ran out.

Unfortunately, since I was pretty busy preparing and plating food for twelve (!), I have no photos of the Roquefort pear salad, but I think we all enjoyed it. Above is the main course: roasted asparagus, peas, mushrooms, and pork tenderloin.

Assorted delectables for our chocolate fondue (thanks to this Ghirardelli recipe)! I realized I had forgotten to put the candied pecans on our salad, so we put them to use during dessert. ;]

As my guests left, they each picked up a bag of caramel corn from this little display.

Although I'll admit my batch of caramel corn was particularly chewy (sorry, guys), my mom swears by a slight adaptation of this recipe.

But of course, what makes a party best are the people who come! <3