on friday my dear husband james turned 26, and yesterday, after weeks of planning, we finally got to celebrate with a weenie roast at my moms house. in case you missed this post, ive never gotten to give james a birthday party before, and according to james, he hasnt had a proper birthday party since he was a small child, since his birthday has always been, well, his grandmas birthday. now in my family, birthdays and parties are kind of a big deal, and i was NOT ok with the fact that james was perfectly fine with never having his own birthday. so this year i put my foot down and decided that once and for all that he WAS GOING TO HAVE A BIRTHDAY PARTY IF ITS THE LAST THING I DO.
at first, this didnt go over so well. james couldnt understand why this was such a big deal to me, and i couldnt understand why this WASNT a big deal to him. it seriously took a couple WEEKS of arguing over this before i could convince james that 1. this was important, and not just for me, but for him, he NEEDED to have his own birthday party and 2. that that it is 100% totally completely normal to pick the kind of birthday party that one would like to have. anyways, after much discussion, we decided that wed have a small gathering of friends and family at my moms house (she has a great backyard for parties) on sunday afternoon (remember, friday was also grandmas birthday, so we spent the day in san diego with jamess family) after church. shortly after that was decided, there was a fantastic deal on sausage links, so we (and by we i mean i) set the theme as a weenie roast.
as soon as we decided on weenie roast, i told my mom and we started bouncing ideas off each other. now, im not big on pinterest (at least, i havent yet figured out how to use it for anything productive), but my mom is. and not only is my mom really great at pinterest, but shes also great at parties. and projects. and free things. so what does she do? she built a fire pit. for free. she literally built an entire fire pit out of scrap materials for this party. and its awesome. im a big fan of mellow, low key parties that are mainly centered around the food, and the fire pit REALLY pulled the party together and made it perfect.
anyways, while the menfolk, from (left: james, my brother andrew, and my stepdad russell) cooked all the sausages on the fire while us ladies got all the other foods ready. we even brought out extra cast iron pans to grill the onions and sauerkraut. as the token vegetarian of the group, i didnt eat any of this, but from what i heard, this part came out really great.
and now for way too many pictures of food, heres the finished sausage table (the cans for the forks and napkins were one of my moms many pinterest finds):
we put all the other foods on a separate table on the other side of the yard, closer to most of the seating, though looking back it probably would have been a better idea to have them closer together, but oh well. anyways, we were able to get all the food together really cheap, the single biggest expense was the sausage, and that was only $16.
for drinks we just had a big pitcher of arnold palmer, along with some wine and sodas, so we didnt have much to put on the drink table, but my mom had this really cute collection of wine bottles for decoration, and i was REALLY happy with how that came out.
while everyone ate, alice and her friend leona did LOTS of super cute playing:
one of the few things that james actually requested are what he calls "campfire churros", which james has been talking about making since before we were even married but i had never heard of them, and he never got a chance to make them, so i was seriously starting to doubt their existence, but turns out, they do exist! basically theyre refrigerated biscuits wrapped around a dowel, sprinkled with cinnamon sugar, and cooked over a fire. they were actually pretty good.
but not nearly as good as the absolutely ridiculous smores cake that my mom made (yes, another pinterest find), which involved a blowtorch.
i mean seriously, look at this cake.
james was only very uncomfortable as we sang happy birthday and served the cake.
p.s. i totally love these candles, and i got them at dollar tree of all places. as the party started getting closer i realized that i had forgotten to account for candles in the budget so i was so relieved to find these for so cheap.
then people started leaving, so we finished the night with james opening his gifts:
with the exception of a few forgotten details (i left the relish and jalapenos at home, and forgot to pick up marshmallows, but my aunt saved the day by bringing some), this party turned out just perfect, and i think i maybe, just maybe changed jamess mind about birthday parties.
stay tuned for next time when i post the recipe for the pasta salad that i made for the party.
No comments:
Post a Comment