A Celebration for the Rest of Us. And a tradition in the making for our family. This year on December 9, we invited 8 couples, some of our dearest friends, over to our house for dinner and well, Festivus! The second annual Festivus! Complete with a Festivus Pole, Feats of Strength (ok, really just a chili stuff your face off), Airing of Grievances (my friends grumbled at me for keeping them up past 10) and a Wrestling Match between my husband and...some dirty dishes. He's too wily to be pinned by anyone and the party has to come to an end sometime. The dirty dishes, now they really were almost his undoing. He didn't come to bed until after 1. This man really really loves me.Our friend Toby had a moment where he couldn't find his wallet. He searched everywhere and it was starting to really worry him. Then he called home and the babysitter found it. It was a Festivus Miracle!
While the prep work for entertaining is exhausting (and double tricky with 2 kids): cleaning the house, planning the menu, making the food or assigning food to be made by others, organizing the dishes and extra tables, setting the tables, decorating (in this case, I wanted all my Christmas decorations to be up), making place cards, making sure the lights are still hanging up outside despite the sudden bout of humidity which unglued all the light holders (GRR!). But when it's all said and done, it is SO worth it. I can't tell you how much I love having so many of my loved ones under my roof at the same time. Seeing them all getting to know each other. Forming bonds, making new friends, laughing together, eating together, enjoying themselves.
This time, we purposely invited people whom we knew didn't all know each other. Thinking, rightly I hope, that if WE love all these people so much, then SURELY they will really like each other! And judging by the laughter and conversations I heard, we weren't wrong.

I actually used place cards, a first for me, in order to seat people by new people. I split up couples and just used my imagination. Since my formal dining room table only seats 6, I used my breakfast room table and added 2 card tables (all decorated individually) in my living room. I had to get creative. And I made sure not to seat myself at the "big" table.

It was so much fun! We had three kinds of chili, plus all the chili fixins you can imagine. And I even made appetizers. Cumin cheese puffs and herbed feta cheese/sun dried tomato bites. People need munchies while introductions are made. It's so much easier to be real when you are both stuffing your face with food. Pretension is just out of the question. Although I don't really worry about that. My friends are all unpretentious.

I borrowed some vintage table linens from my sister-in-law's mother, my life-saver! And I used one of my own, too. I am building my vintage linen collection and it's skimpy on the holiday end. I also borrowed dishes from my sister-in-law. Red fiesta ware chili bowls and plates. I was super happy with the end results.
I overheard some hilarious conversations and learned some things about my friends I hadn't previously known. We also had a surprise visit from Mr. and Mrs. Claus! It was such a success that we're contemplating a New Years bash. Or just something in January...