plan your own party

Four round tables set for nineteen guests on the back patio. The wooden high chair was for Cooper and is so charming. My sister bought that at a consignment store in Ellicottville, NY. It has become one of my favorite things, as many children have now been at the table while sitting in it.

A week ago Monday, I had nineteen guests for dinner, all family, including myself, to celebrate what I guess you would say is a milestone birthday, sixty times around the sun. One extremely handsome and loving husband, two sons, both with beautiful wives, four daughters, one with a husband and one with an attractive significant other, six gorgeous grandchildren, and one exceptional mom. It was a party.

*This is the morning of the party. We were all staying in Eden and went back to Buffalo for the birthday dinner. I am usually one of the first to get up; this was taken probably after morning coffee.*

And this is how I start most days out in the country: a 3.8-mile loop walk. Here you see my four daughters and Elizabeth’s friend, who was visiting from London. My dear friend and I were bringing up the rear. It’s a challenging walk.

Like most birthday celebrations in our family, it was dinner at home. Here are some of the things I did to prepare and make it a bit special:

*This is the boxed stationery I chose. I took an iPhone pic of the invite, but* *I can’t* *find it in my camera roll. 🙂*

I handwrote the invitations on pretty Italian paper I bought at a local stationery store in Hamburg, NY, Graphic-Poetry Stationery Shop. This is the fill-in invitation I chose, Classica Italiana Florentine Invitations. I also purchased the matching fold-over thank you notes. I also picked up several yellow/gold LePen Flex pens to do the lettering.

While I usually do the cooking and serving, for this go-round I wanted some help. Paolo Bettini did an excellent job at a pizza party I threw for my daughter, Elizabeth, in January, so I reached out to him to see if he was up for serving a miniature hors d’oeuvres course and a three-course dinner, and he said yes, yay!

*I set the children’s table with light blue linen napkins that were a gift from my dear sister Tracy.*

*How cute is Jacqueline? I’m not sure if they liked or ate the salad. We served it to them anyway, as trying new things is always important!*

My children and daughter-in-laws started me on a new dinnerware collection called Country Estate from Juliska a few years ago. I wanted to use this for the party, so I spent hours perusing the website and placing orders so I would have enough plates and pasta bowls for us all. I also bought the matching napkins, which made us a little matchy-matchy, but I was all in. It was funny when it was go-time and my daughter was unwrapping the napkins. We discovered that in my all-out hustle, I had miscaculated the order, and we were short two napkins. Had my sister and her daughter Harlan been able to stay, I would have been short four napkins, or one set of four. I didn’t double-check my count or order before hitting submit, and that’s okay. I do all of this crazy stuff for myself, and since I don’t need to report to anyone, missing napkins wasn’t a big deal. I pulled out some beautiful blue linen ones from the cabinet (thank goodness I had ironed them), and life went on.

*The cake layers are placed in the freezer.*

*Madison and I are cutting flowers for the tables* *the morning of the party.*

*Flowers and toys in the car and ready to roll!*

*Peyton and I are making cream cheese frosting.*

*Peyton also helped make the flower arrangements. All of the flowers for the tables I cut and brought in from Eden.*

I baked classic white cakes and froze them. On the day of the party, I drove in from our country house, and my oldest granddaughter and I made a double batch of cream cheese frosting. Together, we stacked and frosted the layers. Using all the flowers I had cut that morning from my small cut-and-come-again garden, she and her brother decorated the cake.

With twenty-one expected guests (my sister and her daughter had to unexpectedly fly home early, and I missed them dearly), the seating plan was something I thought long and hard on. We don’t all fit in the dining room, and I wanted this to be an al fresco dinner, as dinner outdoors is one of my favorite ways to celebrate. Everyone was going to be in town for a whole week, and I knew dinners in Eden would be at two long picnic tables put end-to-end. After measuring, walking, and planning out the floor plan for the patio, I decided on using four four-foot round tables. I ordered the tables and twenty-one Oak Crossback Chairs with cushions from Buffalo Party Rental.

*This is the dream linen I did not buy. I still have my mind on it. Maybe I’ll have one custom-made for the dining room table for Thanksgiving or Christmas.*

Now for the table linens, yikes. I have not invested enough in table linens, and that is on my list of things to get to. I’ll never forget a birthday dinner that one of my dear friends threw for one of our dear friends, and she had all of the table linens and toppers custom-made; it was gorgeous. I didn’t have the time or budget for that (even though I briefly considered ordering fabric and sewing them myself, but I would have had to give up sleep to get it done). I needed to move on from that scenario. My youngest daughter used to work at Matouk, and I love to look at their fine linen collection. My dream world set-up would have been this cloth: the Granada tablecloth, 108″ round, in Chestnut, $475. Another idea I had to move on from, $475 x 4 = $1,900 plus NYS sales tax, $2,066.25 for tablecloths for tables that I don’t own, was just not in the wheelhouse. I didn’t sell nearly enough dresses at my last trunk show to swing that, yet I did have them saved in my cart several times; that’s how my brain goes. I love beautiful fabrics in all ways.

Moving on from the sewing and the dream table, I explored renting. My sister rents high-end linens all the time, and I thought this was a good solution. I landed at a company called Nuage Designs, and I chose a cheerful Orange Papel Chino. I love the combination of orange and blue, so I quickly hit submit and send. Table linens solved!

*I LOVED having a chef on site! Woo hoo!*

*The salad was fantastic and all sourced from the Farmer’s Market.*

*Everyone adored the pasta with tomato and burrata.*

*The salmon was a perfect serving size. Here you see the Country Estate dinnerware I ordered.*

As for the menu, Paolo and I had a planning session and decided on a seasonal salad, a pasta course, and salmon with green beans and a potato as the entree. I advised him of my grandson’s nut allergy, and I let him loose with the hors d’oeuvres course, letting him do what he does best. His food was brilliant.

With any dinner that has more than six guests, I always like to use place cards, even with family. I played with the seating plan for days, and in the end, I chose to go with a kids’ table for the grands, and I sat myself with my four daughters. While in the shower, fifteen minutes before start-time, I stressed out and thought I should sit with my husband. After the shower, I ran down and switched the cards, second-guessing myself, something I do often and always have to work on. I took a breath, asked him to meet me in the library, talked to him about a few last-minute details, and asked him about the seating plan. He gave me the assurance I was looking for, as he usually does, and I went back outside and switched the cards back. I don’t get my four daughters together at one table often, and this was a gift to myself.

*My Etro dress and the dress Caroline is wearing I bought while in France several years ago. Buy well, wear often, share the love.*

*Peyton was wearing all white with a garden flower in her hair and opening a gift to me from my mom.*

Oh- and what to wear! I spent time on this and looked at about a hundred different new dress options. In the end, I pulled a dress from my closet, a dress that I wore to a wedding five years ago. We were having an Italian-themed dinner, so I chose an item I owned by the Italian fashion and luxury goods designer Etro. My oldest daughter wore a dress from my closet that I bought in a small village while we were all together in Provence years ago, and my youngest daughter wore a dress from my closet from Lafayette 148, the brand I host trunk shows for seasonally. My mom also wore a dress from Lafayette 148. Everyone brought their sartorial A game.

I’m a firm believer that when you want something, you have to go out there and create it. My wish was an al fresco family dinner. I used every bone in my body and almost every dollar in my bank account to make it come true. I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.