International Day of Friendship Celebration

The campaign is more than halfway through, and I want to celebrate its ongoing success with another promotion!  What better date than a holiday which celebrates the crucial ingredient in a successful crowd-funding campaign: friendship!  (Awwwww.)

Every donation of $3 or more made on Wednesday will receive a photo post-card with a unique haiku (of no particular quality).  Return donors who participate in this promotion may choose instead to receive a hand drawn portrait by me (of no particular quality).  This bonus thank you gift will be sent via e-mail AND snail-mail.

July 30th is not just Friendship Day in the United States, Wednesday is International Friendship Day!  So, to accommodate ALL time zones, my "friendship day" promotions will be in effect as long as it is the International Day of Friendship somewhere (roughly dusk on Tuesday through dawn on Thursday).  

Cranberry sauce from scratch...

Here's another picture of some of the food we made at my White Elephant party...

I love the way the sugar looks like snow on the cranberries.

The White Elephant Tree

Another Christmas ritual that I was able to recreate for our little gathering of friends, was the decorating of the Christmas tree. A few years ago, my grandmother gave me a box of old ornaments she was no longer interested in using. The box contains a wonderful variety of vintage gems, creating a collage of kitsch when they all hang together on the branches. The guests also made a few of their own, with tooth picks, napkins, and bottle corks. It made the whole process a great deal quicker and more enjoyable than when I have to decorate the tree by myself!

Melanie holds the first ornament to go on the tree!  It opens up like a plastic easter egg;  I assumed it was originally a creative way to give a gift.

I think Monica looks like a Christmas gnome in this picture.  I love that hat!

Emily adds an ornament.  She is the photographer's fiancee, and I noticed there were more of her on the roll than anyone else.  ;-)

Teamwork!

Here I am digging through the box in search of more ornaments as the girls contemplate where the tree is bare and in need of more decoration.

Melanie stands next to the completed tree.

All in all the night was a lovely way to celebrate christmas, blending old traditions with new traditions.  It also geared me up to throw my annual Mad Tea Party in 2010!

The White Elephant Food

Guests to the White Elephant party were asked to bring either food or drink to share with the other party goers.  Well, most guests brought drink!  Luckily my old friend Mark is a chef and had flown in from Minneapolis to help me cook for the party. 

Here Mark and I are preparing the crustini.

A lovely pot of fresh cranberry sauce (made from scratch) simmers on the stove.

Some of my famous devilled eggs sit next to a plate of mushroom, shallot, and rosemary crustini.  The rosemary was fresh from one of my own plants, still growing hearty on my window sill in December!

Here's a plate of local, organic honey crisp apples with some regional sharp white cheddar cheese.

Here is the crustini with the cranberry sauce and a cheese whose name I forget.  It was made from goats milk as well as sheeps milk, with some penicillin bacteria injected to give it a delicious and mild funkiness!

Champagne was the primary drink of choice, though some guests preferred some delicious beers.  One of the White Elephant gifts was actually a four pack of Sprecher's Abbey Tripel which is made right here in Milwaukee.  I was told by the guest who won it that it was quite delicious.  More on the gift exchange in my next blog entry!

The White Elephant Party

In the interest of simultaneously entertaining several holiday season out-of-town guests, I hosted a White Elephant Party this year.  The celebration combined some of my favorite things: food, champagne, friends, and kitschy holiday traditions.  Several people helped bringing this party together, including two different guys named Andrew (and one guy whose last name was Andrews).

Andrew, pictured here listening to me, made three marvelous mixed CD's and dutifully listened for when the music stopped and the disc needed to be changed.

Melanie, pictured here on the right, travelled from Madison to be with us.

I bought those large ornaments at my own rummage sale.

Here I am, frozen in the moment after the cork has fired and before the bottle begins gushing.

My second friend named Andrew (Andrew Hinkle) photographed the party; I am planning his wedding and using his talents to document our little celebration is part of a larger barter. 

Then there was my friend Mark, who called me at the last minute to say he was flying into town (from Minneapolis) to help me cook for the party.  (Read about the food in my next blog entry!)

In the end, I had three over night house guests who came for the party!  Two were from out of state, and one I hadn't seen in almost four years.  The party was all about the people, and like almost all of my gatherings, everyone inevitably sat in a big circle around the biggest table, talking.

It was lovely.