A dinner party

Sunday night, we hosted a birthday dinner party for our dear friend Emily. This was a collaborative affair among Kristin, Sonja, and I (and of course, our husbands!) and we had a lot of fun planning a strawberry themed picnic! Emily and her husband own a wonderful cafe and catering business, so we chose a Sunday evening for the party since they are always busy on Fridays and Saturdays! I thought I would share some details (okay, it turns out to be a lot of details) from the evening.

The Setting

Because we chose a picnic theme and strawberries, red, white and pink were obvious choices for the color scheme.

We used fresh cut hydrangea's from our friend, Carrie's yard and put out bowls of strawberries on the table.

For place cards we cut a slit in the strawberry and slid in a card.

The Food and Drink

For drinks we kept it rather simple with beer, wine, water and strawberry lemonade.

Right before dinner we had a champagne toast to Emily.

For appetizers we served chips, dip and a strawberry and goat cheese crostini.

Our main course consisted of marinated and grilled flank steak, a noodle salad, a strawberry and poppy seed dressing salad, and roasted potatoes.

Dessert

Right as we finished dinner it started to sprinkle and kept it up for just long enough that we had to move to the front porch! It didn't seem to dampen anyone's spirits! For the birthday cake I made a vanilla cake with strawberry mousse. Carrie made delicious chocolate covered strawberries and pretzels and Kristin brought chocolate cupcakes with pink icing.

The Favors

We sent every couple home with a jar of strawberry jam.

The people

Of course, the most important part of any party are the people. We decided to keep it small and intimate and tried to invite Emily's favorite people.