Par-Tay

Yesterday, we hosted a party at our clubhouse.  It was for a couple returning to our hall (specifically to our French group), so it was a welcome back party.  It was so much work but so much fun!

My mother-in-law did all of the organizing and coordinating between the gals in our hall as to who brought what food, drinks, etc.  We had Italian food.

Unfortunately, I did not take many pictures.  You know how it goes....once we got there things got nuts right away.

I snapped this poor picture of the inside of our clubhouse:

 This was before the tablecloths were on the tables with my little flower centerpieces.  The clubhouse on the inside seats around 50.  Plus, there's a game room which got used to the full (many ping pong tournaments happened last night).  But my favorite part was opening up those double doors you see to the back and we had an additional three tables set up out there (seating about 30 more people) right by the pool.

Here's a far shot, and you can't see too many people but I did that on purpose because I have a rule about not posting pictures on my blog of people without their permission.

On the other side of the pool, all of the kids (and a few adults) were playing with the footballs, soccer balls, dodge balls, etc. that my husband had bought that afternoon.  We had around 75 people show up, which is about what we were expecting.  It was an overcast day which kept the temperatures down.  Thankfully it didn't rain!

We had tons of food!  And tons of desserts.  I got two 1/2 sheet cakes from Costco (their cakes are so good!), plus other people brought goodies as well.

I kept the decorations pretty simple.  Plastic colorful tablecloths, tissue pom poms, and I made little flower arrangements for each table.

I got a box of 12 jelly jars from Target, and then tied a little ribbon (from my stash) around each one of them.

Then while at Costco I picked up a $10 bouquet of daisies.

They were cute and I paid a grand total of $17 for 12 little centerpieces.  Not bad!

We got there around 1:30 to start setting up, the party started at 5:00, most people left by 8:30 and we were home and in bed by 9:30.  My stomach was not nice to me last night though, so I didn't go to work today.  I was beat.  I slept until about 10:30, then took my husband some lunch around 1:30, then came home and went back to sleep from 2:30 - 4:30.  And I am still beat!  I'm hoping it's just from the crazy day yesterday (I was literally on my feet 'hosting' from 4:30 to 9:00) and I'm not coming down with something.

So, it was a success!  Everyone had a great time, there was tons of good food, and it was the coolest thing ever to be walking around mingling and hear English AND French being spoken.  Our French group is flourishing!  It makes my heart happy.