Ladies night!

Last Wednesday I hosted our first soiree in our new house - a quaint girls get together with some women I work with!  Anyone who was within 50 feet of me the past 2.5 years know the main thing I missed from storage was my wine glasses + white dishes.  I talked about those sum bitches time and time again.  I could not wait to plan a little party and get to use them all.

Growing up, my mom hosted every event for Thanksgiving + Christmas usually Easter and most family birthdays.  I have been immersed in food/party prep for as long as I can remember.  While I hated it most Christmas mornings as it always meant we had to open our gifts crazy early and clean up our gifts crazy early to start cleaning and preparing for family to come over I am crazy thankful for those habits and memories now.  

I made everything from scratch that I could, including juicing apples for hot apple cider and cooking up dried black beans for a few of the dishes { <--- a recent thrifty obsession I'm sure to bore you with....I mean blog about soon }.  Everything turned out so great!  It was a chilly willy nilly night out so cuddling up in front of the fire with warm { spiced! } apple cider while filling our new home with laughter and memories was beyond perfect.

Here are the recipes that I served which were pulled from my party planning Eat, drink and be merry Pinterest board.

//Taco bites  These were crazy easy and came together in a snap.  I cooked up the turkey and prepped the toppings the night before.  All I had to do was get my wontons + muffin tin ready { I used 2 small wonton wrappers per bite } and pop them in the oven for 8'ish minutes.  I will, without question, make these again for another party.  

//Black bean egg rolls Another easy peasy go to!  I've made these once before and will continue to make them again.  They are a little more time consuming as you have to roll each one, but given enough time the rolling is so therapeutic and satisfying!  { omg who am I - that sounds like a crazy person talking }.  These were the biggest hit of the party.  The recipe is so easily adaptable for what you'd have in your fridge/is in season.  Deeeelicious!

//Bruschetta While delicious and one of my girlfriends said "I'd eat this entire platter if you would let me!" I'm not sure I'd serve it at a party again.  The bread got soggy from the topping and who the heck likes soggy bread?  Maybe I would serve toasted bread with the topping on the side.  

//Sandwich on a stick These were fun to make and I loved the way they looked on the table.  I simply used spinach, deli turkey and deli cheese with a side of honey mustard.  If I could have found cherry tomatoes at a good price, I would have added those, too.  Next time I would use arugula like the link calls for, but I wasn't sure of everyone's preferences and we had a big thing of spinach at home to use up.

//Funfetti dip or as my guests warmly named it Crack Dip.  It's one of those you love to hate to eat
{ andeatandeatandeat. }. I brought the rest to work the next day and I was thanked and cursed for bringing it and introducing it to people.

I also made our favorite Knorr's veggie dip which is so easy because you can mix it all together the day before and the flavors are so much more pronounced by the time it comes to serving.  

It was such a beautiful evening and I am so thankful for each and every one of these ladies who joined. I always feel like a house is never a home until it's been broken in with a night filled with laughter and warm memories.  These ladies did just that and I la-la-la-love them for it.  A few of them even asked if I'd taken the entire day off from work to prepare the evening's nibbles + dranks and considering all I did was leave at 4p to make sure everything was on the table when the girlz got over - I'd consider that a huge success.  I think my party planning extraordinaire mother would be so proud. ;)

We are hosing Friendsgiving on Saturday { ahhhhhhhhhhfreakout! } and I just hope and pray it comes together as well as this party did!