It was my wife's birthday yesterday and she had wanted a party. She
looked after the invitations and my son and I looked after the rest.
Holy cow it is a lot of work to plan a party. One of the hardest things
is to get people to RSVP so that you know how much food to prepare and
how much wine, beer and soft drinks to buy. She sent out more than 70
invitations. Thank goodness there were a lot of people who were going to
be away, had other plans or otherwise could not make it. We had 36
accept and replied and a family of five that let us know the night
before that they were coming and a few that showed up.


The food worked out. My plan was to cook skewers. I did about 4 dozen
each of pork slouvaki, chicken Tandoori and chicken satay. All three
were a big hit. He had a cheese platter that was almost completely
eaten. The Brie went first. We did a Greek salad and a tossed salad.
There was an assortment of cold cuts and a bunch of white whole wheat
rolls. Also popular was melon and Prosciutto. I had lots of water melon,
cantaloupe, honeydew melon, strawberries, grapes and cherries.

I really overestimated the amount of wine we would need I had bought
two cases of white wine and a half case of red. No one had red. We went
through only 6 bottles of wine. Despite the "best wished only", there
were 15 gift bottles of wine brought. I had a case of lite beer and a
dozen real beers, a decent IPA. We only used about 3/4 of that. Thank
goodness the **** tank neighbour brought his own beer, and went home
twice to refill his cooler.

I have a water melon and a half leftover. This might be a good time to
make up some simple syrop and turn it into watermelon sherbet.

It was not quite as hot as I expected it to be, and thank goodness the
rain in the morning only lasted a half hour and then it was nice and
sunny. The last time we had a birthday party for her it was blistering hot.



Maybe we should be thinking about hosting a pot luck. We can provide the
wine and beer with the leftovers and not worry about preparing the food.
The unfortunate part of hosting a party is that you are so busy
preparing and serving food, and picking up plates, offering drinks etc
is that you don't get much opportunity to socialize.


Something to think about for dishes etc. It is surprisingly affordable
to rent. There is a party shop a couple miles from here and we rented
two 6ft. tables, four 48 inch tables, 20 folding chairs, 60 wine glasses
and 60 plates for about $85. We could have rented a tent, but a 10x10
tent would have cost $175. I asked a friend if he knew any other places
that rented tents. He said he had one he would loan me and said that
they had them on sale at Walmart for about $80. So I borrowed his and
bought one. I figured that even if it only lasted for one use it was
less than half the cost of renting. In fact, I loaned mine to my sister
in law last week for a showed, so it has already been used twice.