Tag: celebration

Life Posts · Party Posts

Missing Hospitality

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Hello from our house to yours! We had our Covid bubble friends over today and I realized how much I missed entertaining! We had been doing at least one event a month with multiple sets of friends and I think I’m going through pandemic fatigue and social withdrawal.

We do have a distance movie watching party planned. This year our fall movie is The Hobbit and I really wanted to keep something going, even if it was going to be really different. The plan right now is to offer an “unexpected culinary journey” box of snacks for people to come pick up and then take home and watch the movie. I have a couple of people who I will probably be mailing their boxes. I’m looking forward to it! The Husband thinks I might be a little weird, but I have had some interest in it already. To prep for it and boost our decor, I bought this fun Michigan/Middle Earth themed picture. It’s from an Etsy shop called Home Squirrel, which is located in Marquette!

Isn’t it adorable? It’s a fun touch to our decorations. Tomorrow will be the day to try and switch out the outdoor decor and finish off the indoor part as well.

In the meantime, I thought a look back at my favorite parties might cheer me up a bit. Hopefully it helps spark some fond memories in you too!

Our Epiphany parties are, of course, some of my favorite parties! It’s so fun to bake and cook and welcome people in to start the new year off in style! I took pity on my Dad and didn’t feature the rulle picture. 😉

My Christmas tomte collection is growing. Don’t ask me why the ones on the left are all facing extremely left. I have no idea!

Lunar New Year started off pretty small, but got very big very quick. My favorite part about this party is that my family celebrates it and the Husband’s family doesn’t, despite there being a connection to Chinese culture. It’s been fun to look at the different cultural aspects of the holiday and incorporate them into our life. I still love the Lego set that I found unexpectedly!

Harry Potter! I’m glad we’re taking a break from this one this year, even though I loved the decorations we had. I’m saddened that the author, J.K. Rowling has had some unfortunate attitudes this past couple of years. Choosing to celebrate the good parts of the series, including messages of hope in darkness, friendship, curiosity, and the real life struggle of good vs. evil, helps me remember our party with good thoughts. Plus, I got to buy a ridiculous amount of candy!

The Tea Making party seems like it was so long ago! I enjoyed having girlfriends over to watch movies and make our own tea blends. Maybe I can recreate this one with just a few ladies!

Our very first Hobbit Party! Fancy took over the chair by the fireplace and would whine at people who dared to sit in it until they got up and moved. I remember being so nervous that no one would get it, or it was too dorky. The food picture was the Afternoon Tea table. Luckily, we have excellent friends who went right along the nerd journey with us!

I really did miss our summer party this year. If I remember correctly, this Caprese had garden basil and garden tomatoes. It is always fun to get together with friends when it stays so light out. More time for conversation and laughter.

My parents and grandparents all instilled the gift and the desire to be hospitable in me and I know it’s suffered during the pandemic. I didn’t even know if my coworkers would feel comfortable eating homemade food this summer and have only brought in a few things. We can’t see our friends, like we used to, and it’s wearing on both of us. It is helpful for Piggy to be able to decompress with just us and a very select few people, but man… I miss party conversation. Jokes about not having enough cookies, pickle trays, and friends threatening to steal whole platters of cookies. I also miss getting to try new recipes that people have made and laughing as I attempted to find a spot for them on the table.

We both miss our game nights too! We have a rotating group of friends who switch in and out. Our dining room table doesn’t fit a ton of people comfortably, but we make it fun anyway. Now, when we can have game nights again, we’ll have comfier chairs at least, with the Star Trek seat cushions I made.

No pictures from game nights, as we were always having too much fun. The thing I like best about them is that I can be myself with coworkers turned friends and friends who put up with all us weird mental health worker types. We all have such weird and mostly dark senses of humor. I like it a lot.

I really hope the distance Hobbit party works out! I really need to feed people again. It might not be quite the same, but I’m excited to try it out.

Let me know how you’re handling connecting with people too! I’d love to hear some other ideas. I’ll leave you with a peaceful Piggy dumpling as advanced payment!

“What about Second Breakfast?!”- Elevensies Party Post
Party Posts

“What about Second Breakfast?!”- Elevensies Party Post

LSieh2 Comments

Whew! I need a nap. We had our Elevensies party yesterday and it went well. We need a few more comfy chairs though when we do movie parties.

I used a bunch of new recipes and had almost everything made by Saturday. We started at 11 AM and the last movie finished at around 9:30 or so. By that time, it was just the Husband and I, which was fine. Fancy was absolutely exhausted and kept whining at me until I let her have her round chair again. It was in front of the fireplace, which is very hobbit looking. Here is her at the end of the night.

Yes, that is her foot in her mouth. What a doll! She did pretty well, although we still had to leash her to keep her off the table.

I made sure to take a picture of all the different meals. The only one I don’t have a picture of is Supper at 8. No one was hungry! I can’t imagine why! 🙂

Here is Elenvensies.

We had brunch type foods. The chocolate banana muffins were a hit. We also had the Quiche Lorraine again, nissu, jams, and berries with cream.

Luncheon was at 1 pm.

We had sandwiches, salad, pickles, and chocolate chip cookies, and lemonade. Kayla brought the salad and fixings and a peanut butter cheesecake, which I have no pictures of. It was all delicious.

Afternoon tea was at 3:30.

We had tea sandwiches, which Kayla helped me make, cream and berries, cinnamon sugar scones, lemon bread, madeleines, Lembas shortbread, and jams. Tea, of course, was served as well.

This meal was where I used the most new recipes. I would eat afternoon tea all the time, if I could.

I used two of my tea cookbooks and a Pioneer Woman recipe for the scones. http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/sweet-cinnamon-scones/

I didn’t add cinnamon chips because I don’t like them, or have them on hand. I also just sprinkled the top with cinnamon and sugar, not the called for topping. They were so yummy!

We had no lemon curd for the tea. I had a momentary panic on Saturday night, but decided it would be okay and it was. 🙂

I used a cookbook called The Charms of Tea by Hearst Books, for the tea sandwiches, madeleines, and lemon bread. The lemon bread is on the left, nissu on the right.

We had ham and watercress and cucumber sandwiches.

Taking Tea by Andrea Israel with recipes by Pamela Mitchell provided the recipes for the shortbread and seed cake.

These two cookbooks are cool because they have information on all sorts of teas and tea ceremonies around the world.  It’s really fun just to read all the information.

Dinner (6 pm) was not a large affair. We had potato chowder with bacon and cheese for toppings. I served from the kitchen, so no elaborate table. This recipe was from Taste of Home: The New Slow Cooker. 

Supper (8 pm) was going to be leftovers and seed cake, but no one was hungry. I have a whole seed cake for craft night tomorrow. 🙂 I have it wrapped up, so no pictures.

We all decided that we couldn’t eat like hobbits all the time! We were all stuffed. It was a ton of fun.

Next year we might have a Harry Potter marathon. There’s a lot of food in those movies too.

Now though, I have to go back to reality and head out to work. Have a wonderfully cozy day!

Not So Wordless Wednesday- 4th of July
Wordless Wednesdays

Not So Wordless Wednesday- 4th of July

LSiehLeave a comment

My family has a unique way to celebrate the 4th of July, which we happily credit to my Grandma Shirley. She was a nurse and had just come off a night shift and was eating cereal at a restaurant when they put up a sign for “Fresh Strawberry Sundaes.” She said they looked so good that she had to order one and when it came, she poured it on top of her cereal. Ever since then, my family has done the same. No matter where we are, we all take the time to have this breakfast treat. Over the years it evolved to have blueberries too, so we can say it’s patriotic.

We normally send pictures of our breakfast to each other too. This year our breakfast included homemade custard based vanilla ice cream and three small strawberries from the garden along with the store ones.

Here’s this year’s breakfast shot! 

Here are the components in case you want to adopt the tradition:

You need a flaky cereal, strawberries, blueberries, and ice cream. The proper way to make this (although there is some debate) is to pour the smallest amount of cereal you can get away with on the bottom, add the ice cream, then berries. Some people put the ice cream first, but that’s wrong…

Now, if you happen to run out of ice cream before you finish the rest of the berries (as I make sure to do,) it’s fine to get just a bit more. You have to come out even, of course.

I have won friends and influenced people with this breakfast. We had it one year when I was working at a summer camp and had brought other staff friends home and they thought it was the best part of the weekend. 🙂

Fancy ate some strawberries to celebrate with us, but only likes frozen blueberries. She spent most of the last two evenings with me in the basement hiding from the end of the world, otherwise known as the fireworks. The fleece blanket I tucked her in with apparently has magical powers, as she spent most of last night sleeping while I sewed and organized.

She’s better today and is still pretty cuddly. We took her to the dog friendly mall twice over the weekend and she liked that. The second time she refused to leave until we took her to the dog bakery for her free sample and some pets. There is a chance she is a very spoiled pup.

I hope you all had a happy and safe 4th! Feel free to adopt the family tradition and make it your own. We don’t mind sharing!