The Brooklyn Gathering

Please forgive our absence.  I hate it when the blogs that I follow don't post frequently enough...and here I am, my own worst offender. 

To be fair, it has been a wild week.  We went from our nice homey-moon off to jumping back into work last Monday and it was the most intense week.  We are moving the museum's collection so I had to do a whole lot of packing and lifting boxes and I was rarely able to check my email.  Then there was the 9/11 anniversary events which took a lot of time.  We ended our week with our anticipated Brooklyn Gathering to celebrate the wedding with local friends.

I promise to go back and post more about the wedding and all the details of our homey-moon but first the most recent event.

Fortunately our apartment was pretty much complete so we were able to host about 60 people during an "open house" from 3 pm - 8 pm yesterday.  My very good friend from college (also named Stephanie) came from Delaware to stay with us and was tremendously helpful with all the party prep.  So grateful she was there to help us out.

In the morning, Dan got us Steve's Bagels to power-up and then we decorated and I cleaned while Dan and Steph L. went to the store.  I had gone to Trader Joe's the day before to get the other ingredients for our feast.  The menu included cocktail weeines, 7-layer dip with tortilla chips, potato chips and onion dip, hummus and pita, apples and dip, caprese pasta salad, and for dessert caramel apple cupcakes and maple brown sugar cookies.

Despite the busyness I did mange to grab a few pictures. 

 

The teenagers nearly wiped everything out within the first two hours.  That practically sent me into a panic.  But we had yet another fishes and loaves moment and ended up having plenty of food.

It got a little hot and cramped in the apartment with so many people but it worked out okay and everybody seemed to have a good time.  Dan had put together a little PowerPoint with the wedding photos we had gotten so far so that people could have a glimpse of the day.

The little kids loved the balloons until Dan hid them all in the bathtub.  :o)

It was a lot of work but I really enjoyed being able to host something large like that and use our space and make use of our kitchen.  Not that we'll be doing anything on that scale again soon but it was a good start to being a hosting couple and a fantastic way to celebrate with people who we unable to attend the wedding.