Housewarming

Today we invited some friends, family and neighbors (old and new) over to our new house to break in the tiki bar and warm our home.

I ended up running around all day, and failed to take more than this single picture of the food table early in the day - which doesn't begin to do justice to all the food people brought.

In addition to the chocolate peanut butter brownies, Mai Tai cupcakes, chocolate chip cookies, and white chocolate coconut cookies I made, and the other snacks we put out, Dan's Mom brought sandwiches, his sisters brought chips and dip, a fruit platter, and a pie, my Mom brought chips and her homemade pico de gallo salsa, Serenity brought a rum cake, Mark & Kurt brought a chocolate pecan pie, Marshall brought chips and Spanish dip, Martha brought brownies and biscuits (plus the biggest bag of peanuts ever, which was a huge hit in the bar), Alice & Geno brought chips and snacks galore (and amazing pineapple serving bowls), and Jim & his wife brought her famous lemon meringue pie - and I'm surely forgetting something (like the gorgeous veggie tray Anna made for us and sent with Jason, since she was at home with Otis and his fever).

Dan & I made up big batches of our Mai Passion cocktails (Mai Tais with passion fruit juice), and there was more wine than anyone could possibly drink.

It was a wonderful day. I only wish I'd taken more pictures!

I was also excited that thanks to some careful choices when shopping for supplies, bins with labels listing what went where, and conscientiousness by our guests, the party was nearly a zero-waste event! We were able to recycle, reuse, or compost nearly everything - and produced only a tiny bag of garbage - about the size of a plastic grocery bag!