Christmas Birthday Party 2011

Simple, cute, and everyone gets to take home the water glass and snow globe...such a deal! LOVE the chargers....I might even buy those!

Here's a December tradition {three years and it can be a tradition, right?} that I really look forward to each year. A local church has a huge, amazing Women's Christmas Dinner. It happens during the first week of December, which is also my birthday week. And what do I want most for my birthday? To spend some time with friends.

The way this works is each table has a hostess, so I I'm the hostess. The church provides a table, chairs, tablecloth, packets of sugar and cream, lemon for your glass, water, and/or coffee. The hostess must set the table and then clean up the area at the end {which can be a little yucky, but we have this down now and we're finished in no time}. Oh, and Scott's Seafood caters the buffet dinner, which is always VERY delicious.

I try to come up with a theme. I rarely stick with the traditional Christmas theme. Or with the green and red. One year it was blue and white and circles, one year it was the Grinch with bright green and brown. Very cool.

I head over to Pleasanton Rentals for inspiration. This year was really tough because I went during November and all I saw was Thanksgiving stuff. My brain was clogged with autumn, harvest, and turkeys. After much texting with photos to my go to foo foo friend, Margaret,....and eventually I just had to call her. She's very good at getting me focused. Then I went to the Grand Affair in San Ramon....nice shop, great linens, but VERY limited on everything else {NO napkin rings!!!}. At about this time Margaret was leaving Anthropologie with her daughter. They had found snow globes {which were WAY too expensive, but they made them and they were so cute}. So excited, this was our inspiration!

So back to Pleasanton Rentals. Cherie helped me pick out everything and I put it on hold. Margaret made the centerpiece and snow globes {along with her very artsy daughter}. The water glasses were ordered from Amazon (and they do not hold HOT liquids!) and I spent time on Saturday making tags for the glasses, cleaning them, packing them. Oh, and I picked up the glass jars on Friday at Michael's.

Monday I loaded up the car, picked up all the stuff at Pleasanton Rentals and headed to the church. After lugging in a couple of loads on a cart, I spent a touch over an hour to decorate. Now this is challenging for me. I don't do this often......well, once a year! And I had such a time getting the darn table lines even. After I had the table set part way, I noticed the tablecloth was so uneven, I undid the whole thing and started all over again. One of the ladies at the next table helped me determine some of the centerpiece arrangements, very kind, she showed mercy.

The event begins at 6, I wasn't sure of the traffic so I arrived almost 30 minutes early! D would be so proud of me, shocked, but proud too. I had to get in to start up the battery operated lights and light the candles. I fussed with the candles for 30 minutes!!!!! When you see a candle floated in water in a jar without the wide mouth, be VERY IMPRESSED! I burnt a few fingers, used a knife to carve around the wick, prayed.....it looked good, but not a fan of this.

We had an hour to walk around to look at all the tables. I'm not sure how many ladies attend, and this was the second of two nights, but I'm pretty sure there were at least 70 tables of 8 over the two nights.

Mom and Daughter. This is really odd because Mom had on flats and Daughter had on VERY high heels.....there's a much bigger height difference. This looks really good.

This is another table, not mine

Here we are, having a GREAT time!

There was a musician that played the keyboard and sang. We were the percussion for the Little Drummer Boy. I wanted to stomp our feet since that's the way we sing it with E.
The main speaker was Patsy Clairmont and she's wonderful. She's hilarious and profound. Big take away is that Feelings do NOT have Reason...or something like that....should have taken notes....but I was just in the moment and enjoying the evening. And she was hilarious when she explained what it's like when she has to zip her lip.....all her words are swirling in her body wanting out...like a game of Scrabble in her throat! I know how she feels! She totally makes her point hit your heart and your head.
I can hardly wait until next year! Not the birthday part, just the fun time with friends.