Christmas party

We hosted our annual Christmas party Saturday night. I like to have eight at our table, but we ended up with six (clockwise from left): Tonya, Linda, Marilyn, Hubby, my empty chair and Stacy. We love to entertain any time of the year, but especially at Christmas. The house is always so beautiful with all our decorations. The light of our trees and candles gives the dining and living rooms a warm, relaxing glow. And, of course, the food is always wonderful.

I always make the Christmas menu cards more elaborate than for other theme dinners. This ribbon decorated one of our gifts last year. I kept it for future use, not knowing what I’d do with it. As I waited for Hubby to escape a very ill-timed Saturday morning meeting, the design leaped into my head. After cutting ribbon, I lit a match and melted each end to prevent raveling. I had intended to secure ribbon to menu and name cards with knots, but my paper punch’s holes were too large. I had to tie three knots on top of each other before ribbon remained in hole. That took too long. Instead, I taped the ribbon to the cards. That method didn’t look quite as nice, but, as Patty says, life is a series of trade-offs. As I look at design now, perhaps I should have dangled the ribbon on the card’s other side. Whatever. Guests loved the cards. That’s what matters. The two menu items that are partially obscured were “Cranberry-Orange Pork Tenderloin” and “Out of This World Cranberry Salad”. We didn’t eat the salad. We intended to serve it with the pie, but we were too full. So we took it to our church’s Christmas dinner the next day. They devoured most of it.