Painting Party

Two posts in a row! What what!

Last weekend we celebrated by friend's birthday with a night at Painting with a Twist, which is an instructor led painting session and you can bring in snacks and wine.  So basically it's most of my favorite things rolled into a 2 hour party.

I call myself the traveling party, because more often than not my trunk is filled with a variety of party essentials: platters, decorations, you name it.  But this party takes the cake in the traveling department.  I knew I wouldn't be able to get home and back to the painting place before the class started and have time to set up so I left home with a cooler filled with cheeses, snacks, and wine and trunk full of platters and plates...and carried it into work.  It's days like those I'm thankful that I have my own office to hide random things in.

Snacks included Marcona almonds, brie, the most delicious blue cheese ever, and a sharp white cheddar, some fruit, and various crackers.

A huge shout out to this Whole Foods for carrying a gluten free chocolate cake!  Jennifer can't eat gluten and this is the first time I found a gluten free cake.  ...my baking skills are not quite ready to tackle that feat.

 The beginning on our painting adventure.

The end.

Also, unrelated to the painting party, but I made this as a gift to one of my coworkers for her 10th anniversary with my firm.  I call it crafting: attorney style.

If I finally upload some pictures from my real camera, I may make it three days in a row!

State Fair Themed 18th Birthday Party

Well I'm back.  My apologies for the delay; I've been finding it rather difficult to find a time to blog with working full time.

A couple weekends ago, I threw my cousin a State Fair Themed 18th Birthday.  The State Fair is her favorite thing and it seemed only logical to kick off fair season (her birthday was the week before) with a little State Fair inspiration.  The Texas State Fair is deemed the Fried Food Capital of Texas so I knew a majority of the food needed to be fried.  We picked up most of the food pre-made, but I was determined to homemake the corn dogs. (They're her favorite food).

Frying 24 corn dogs wasn't very difficult, although it was slightly time consuming.  My advice for any sort of frying is to be diligent with the temperature of the oil.  Too hot and your oil will burn and your house will smell like a McDonald's.  Too cold and your food will come out greasy and oily.

We kept the decorations fairly simple and went for a country, Texas theme.

*Sorry for all of the terrible quality photos.  I left my real camera at home and had to rely on my iPhone for photos.

The party itself was a complete surprise and I really have to commend her friends on keeping the entire thing under wraps.

I made the banners by cutting bandanas in half and hot gluing them to jute.  And yes, I burned the devil out of my fingers, twice.

Food included: fried corn dogs, "gas station" sandwiches (it's a family tradition), buffalo wings, fried jalapeño bottle caps, mac and cheese cakes, mozzarella sticks, and assorted popcorns.

Jason hand squeezed 20 lemons to make the lemonade (he's a keeper that one) and we enlisted one of Sarah's friends to make cake balls, in lieu of cake.

We had a made to order funnel cake station.  I fried individual portions of funnel cakes for the kids and we had a variety of sweets to top them with.  The empty bowl eventually had powdered sugar in it...after my Gram saved the day and made a last minute hail mary trip to the grocery store.  

 Little Dolce enjoying the party, by staying far away from everyone.  (He's actually sitting on an outside table.)

Happy Birthday SK! Love you.