Party Time!

Ok, I think I have teased you all long enough, lets get to the actual party time! I think last time I left off my blog bearley 5 minutes before guests arrived and just ready....

Set Scene: Doorbell rings, moments of heart palpitations and light sweat from hostess....Compose one's self with a swig of Kir Royal and open door, cue smile.

All of Gavin's and my guests arrived quite quickly (except 2) and drinks of Kir Royal were quickly in hand, yes, I did share the alcohol....and we mingled around the very small entry area, as my lounge room had been converted into a floating style restaurant. I passed around the salmon mousse and croutons, unfortunately the croutons were not as toasted as I would have liked, and instead were more like stale bread rounds, oh well. People were however suitably impressed by the decor, if not calling me just a little crazy for 'pizazz' factor of the decorations and layout of the dining area. 

It soon became apparent that unless we were about to start a game of sardines, that it would be better for all guests to be seated in the dining area, to give them more comfort. Once people were comfortably seated I went into the kitchen to check on how the entree was heating up. Almost done, I layed out the entree bowls, served another round of drinks, and as they would say on Masterchef, plated up. It took 2 people 3 trips to the kitchen to get all the bowls to the dining table, but yum! The entree was (I think) yummy. (I can say this because I just mearly copied a fabulous recipe in a book).

Conversation was thankfully flowing fine, so I set off back across the hall to check on main. Big problem number one. All dishes required did not fit in my oven as I had predicted. No matter, I solved the problem by placing one tray of pumpkin into a steamer and cooked one lot that one. Big problem number 2, more than 40mins later the pork was nowhere near done. No matter, just ply said guests with more alcohol. That done I went to check on the pork again. Still quite rare I put plan B into action. With Gavin's help we removed the 2 and a half racks from the oven, sliced them into cutlets and set about searing them in our two large frying pans. Problem number 3, the smoke alarms went off...twice. Thanks to my brother Justin who worked out how to hush them... By now I had worked up a minor panic, as guests had arrived at 7pm and has so far only eaten a small amount of salmon mousse and a small entree. And I had been giving out a lot of alcohol. Deciding between making my guests wait a little longer or give them food poisoning, I choose the first option and main was served a little before 9. Everyone loved the pork (Phew), and the brussle sprout and pancetta salad was yum. The pumpkin could have been cooked a little more evenly but overall I thought it was passable.

After dinner has settled a little while and conversation was still flowing nicely I went to finish plating up my favourite course for the evening, Eton Mess. mmmm Eton Mess. This was by far the easiest course to prepare and serve (except the chocolate truffles) but I am biased, I do love to cook and eat dessert and sweet things! Unfortunately once I had divided up all the desserts I realized that due to 2 bowls being broken in storage I realized I was 2 desserts short. Feeling my heart break just a little, I bravely faced up to the fact that I would have to sacrifice Gavin's and my desserts so all my guests would have one. But, to my fabulous surprise, Rav, one of my fabulous guests, informed me she could not eat egg. Shame, oh well dessert for me, her partner then announced he was not really a sweets fan and passed it bowl to Gavin. This course of the meal sounded like this. Nom Nom Nom Nom.

Next was coffee and chocolate truffles of which a person who shall remain nameless took two (Yes you Philip), and more wine, beer and Kir Royal. The evening began to wind to an end, and guests departed between 11pm and 2am. Gavin and I dragged ourselves to bed to face the cleanup in the morning...

T minus 12 hours

Imagine, its the night before the party. Due to the fact the chair covers took so long to make, I still have to buy all the groceries, make the chocolate minted truffles, cook the salmon mousse, collect 6 chairs from my brother and sister-in-laws and get some sleep. I was also supposed to attend the disco run by the P&C that night, but in my state of full party prep, I declined my invitation. Almost straight after school finished that afternoon I left school, drove to the shops, did the quickest grocery shop in the history of grocery shopping and worked on the chair covers. At 8pm I took a break to get the chairs, came home finished the chair covers and then cooked the salmon mousse, meringue and chocolate minted truffles. Not my best work, but it was edible.  By this stage I dragged my body upstairs and fell into bed.
   
Ok its the morning of the party - 7am. I am lying wide awake in bed with sheer panic running through my veins:

List of things to do:
- Collect 4 chairs, a CD player, baking trays, 2 trestle tables and Pyrex dishes from my parents.
- by a gazillion carnations
- buy the bottle of creme de cassis for Kir Royal drinks (after calling about 20 bottle shops in Perth the only place I could find it was De Vine Cellars in Inglewood).
- collect meat from my wonderful local butchers (Wharf st Quality Meats)
- set up the lounge room including covering the walls with black paper.
- clear all the furniture out of the lounge room in order to make room for the party furniture
- Make the entree, main and whip the cream and make the raspberry sauce for dessert.

You know, just the usual Saturday ;-)

To cut a long and boring story short I did manage to get everything done, but only with the help of my wonderful friend Nancy who helped my wallpaper my lounge room walls, by best friend Lisa that helped dress the chairs, put the candles in the vases and is my number one cloud maker, and her fiance Russell and my boyfriend Gavin who covered my windows with black plastic, put the stars up on the walls arranged the flowers in the swan and whipped the cream. So with just 5 mins before guests arrived, I was ready.

You bought how much Tulle?!

So the swan was fixed(ish), the local second hand shops were relieved of every gold edged plate and bowl I could find, I had trawled the local flea markets in search of glassware and further swans and I had even managed to buy 20 pairs of angel wings from Rave (probably due to all those fallen angles from the LYNX ads...Anyway, I digress. My next big problem was the chair covers. The ones in the book are dual layered, first a layer of champagne or pinkish satin/silk, covered over by a layer of tulle. I had previously looked at hire places for the chair covers, but at $20 a chair cover, times the number I needed = a lot. After much pondering and wishing I was a multi-millionaire, I remembered that a few weeks previously, myself and my boyfriend had attended an engagement party for one of his friends, and that the table cloths at the party were pretty much the colour required, made of the right fabric, and best of all, the brides mother had made the tablecloths, so hopefully I would be able to borrow them. Thankfully the lovely Amanda allowed me to borrow the tablecloths, and draped over the chairs they looked great, BUT, unfortunately there were only 9 tablecloths, and by that stage my guest list was 20 awesome friends. There was only one thing for it, it starts with Spot, and ends in light. So there I was one day after work during a Spotlight sale buying 40m of tulle, yes that's right - 2m per chair, times 20 chairs = 40m. Let me just say, I know, that is a friggin' lot of tulle. Add to that the 15m of Winston satin I bought for the remaining chair covers and I was starting to feel like perhaps spotlight ought to give me frequent flyer points, or at least a free thimble...At that point I brought all the fabric home, put it into the sewing room and shut the door for the magic sewing fairy to do her thing. Unfortunately, when I opened the door the weekend before the party, the magic sewing fairy had not done her job. Hmmm. So I pulled out the two massive rolls of tulle and set about cutting out the backs and fronts of the chair covers. I cut, sewed and pricked myself with pins for 3 days straight (thank god for long weekends) and by the end of it I was still only halfway through! I even had to laugh when I opened the door to the sewing room and it looked like a giant ball of cream fairy floss had swallowed my furniture, I was even dreaming about counting pins. But I knuckled down, came home from work every day as early as I could, and sewed like a mad-woman. By 9pm the night before the party, the chairs had clothes. Thank god!

1 Down - 8 To Go

Swantastic ;-) So, the party was Saturday night, and, if I do say so myself, I think was great. After a general bit of a converse with my keypad about details leading up to the night I will give you a brief run down of costs, highlights, lowlights, success's and difficulties...But for now, cast your mind back several weeks to when I was upset, nay distraught, at the possible loss of my swan....

So in the last blog I posted pre-party I told you that my beautiful swan, that I purchased $120 for on ebay (including courier delivery, was supposed to have been delivered to me, an signed for, but I had not reviewed it. Anyway long story short the sender of the package had just been given the wrong tracking number, and so, the next day I arrived home to have a note from the courier saying I  could pick it up from the depot. Super-excited I raced off the next day after work to go and collect my precious piece of porcelain. I arrived at the depot 5 mins before closing and signed for my package. I should have known something was wrong then. The box was on its end, just haphazardly at the end of someones desk. But I was just so excited she was not missing anymore that I put the very large box on the back seat of my car, strapped it in, and off I went home. I got home, put the box in the lounge room, and sliced open the box. It was packed full of cushion stuffing - yey I thought, its been packed carefully. But as I started to unwrap it I heard the unmistakable 'clink' noise of broken china. Be strong I said, it might just be one small piece, and you will be able to repair it, but as I removed more packaging it became much more apparent that the swan was in more than 20 pieces.

after downing a shot of something, I sent a text message to the seller. He at first was very supportive, and said not to worry, it was insured and, not to unwrap it further. As it turns out however, the excess on the swan's insurance was $150 dollars, and therefore not worth the seller making a claim. I then told him I wanted a refund, as clearly the goods did not arrive to me in the condition described! The seller said he would half the loss with me by refunding me $60. I told him no way, that he had all the control over the situation and I had none, and as I found out through one quick phone call to the courier, they actually don't provide a service for fragile goods. Ho hum. I upped my 'upsetness' with the seller, and he upped his refund offer to $90 (still leaving me out of pocket $30 for a heap of broken china. So I picked myself up from off the floor where I was throwing a 2-year-old style tantrum and set about sticking it back together. (Photo's below) And, may I just add, I have not yet got my $90 back...

Bad Blogger = Me

Ok so party one is now done and dusted... and washed, vacuumed and ALMOST finished being put away. I know I never let you all know the outcome of the swan drama, but you'll have to just wait a little longer... until the hangover goes away... but I will leave you this pic of last night and I promise to give you the full wrap-up asap x