Party of 8

This past weekend, we finally had my friend, Teresa's 35th birthday celebration. Her actual birthday was in February, and the first planned dinner party had to be postponed due to lack of babysitting, so here we are in June.....

Anyway, it was my turn to host and can I just say how fun it was to plan a dinner party???? It's been eons since Mark and I hosted a dinner party sans kids. It was fun to decorate and light candles without worrying about someone getting burned or setting the house on fire. We got out the good china and glassware, served fun cosmopolitans for the ladies, enjoyed cocktails and appetizers on the deck, followed by dinner and desert in the dining room. Heck, we even got to use [for the first time] those fancy wine glass charms we bought in Napa Valley almost 7 years ago!! Dinner was set for 7:30, but half of the party didn't arrive until 8:00 so appetizers didn't happen until 8:30 and we didn't sit down to dinner until close to 10 p.m.

MENU: Salad
Chicken Marsala over pasta

Lemon Herb seasoned green beans

Italian bread

Individual Lemon pudding cakes for dessert

A good [too good] time was had by all.

For some reason, I'm always giving Teresa recipes [not because I'm a good cook or anything] so I decided to make her a recipe box as her birthday gift. I had these great recipe card stamps from Stampin' Up that I had wanted to use for a while [read: over a year] and I love how the recipe cards turned out. The dividers were decorated up with ribbon and I made a "5 star yummy" tag on a paper clip for each section so she could mark her favorite recipes.