Birthday Party Fun!

It was big J’s birthday on Friday. Just two days before, I decided it would be fun to host a karaoke party! I’ve only participated in this fun-activity about three times but each time I had a blast as I failed to take it as seriously as some of the other “singers.” I called and left messages and only when Simon called back did I have to change plans. Now, Simon is an English business type, and, being a very successful amateur actor, I expected him to embrace the karaoke theme. “I’m sorry Bren, I just can’t STAND karaoke.” End of Plan A!

Plan B. OK, so I changed direction and themed the get-together,

home-made pizza, wine and games.

I sent detailed instructions to our dearest friends and then the work began … shopping, baking,chopping etc.
You can imagine how it felt when J called on Friday and said he would be coming home early!!! I tried delay tactics … I need a special cheese for a recipe for dinner … can you pick up some batteries …. anything, but no, he wanted to come home! Well, it sure put me into fast gear and by the time he arrived, I was sitting in my favourite armchair, with all in its proper place in the kitchen, Mozart playing and a lavendar-oil infuser masking the aromas of roasted pork, home made tomato sauce and chocolate cake!

Our plan, as far as he was aware, was to leave the house at 7.45pm with him still not knowing why, where or with who. However, at that very moment, the front door rang and I called for him to answer …

“Surprise … Happy Birthday!” I heard. Our dearest friends were altogether at the door, capturing the moment on camera. Well … we had a lovely evening full of fun. A little later, our daughters arrived and completed the group.

I made 4 different pizzas as folk milled around the kitchen: margharita with tomato sauce, olive oil, garlic and basil, cambozola with pear and walnut, potato with red onion and rosemary, and pulled pork with thyme and watercress. I find the pizza dough elicits in me a call to create, and I enjoy combining different elements to create unusual tastes. I had also roasted Tamari-marinated almonds. And, although I had thought of buying a Thomas Haas masterpiece for dessert, instead I made 55 mini chocolate cake balls! I then made a dark chocolate sauce and drizzled the sauce over the “cake” which comprised 5 rows each with 11 chocolate cakes on a foil-covered board. I made a chestnut and whipped cream “dip” for dipping each chocolate morsel. I thought about putting a candle in each, but then realized he might run out of puff trying to blow them all out so I bought silver icing-sugar Roman Numeral candles! Just one L and one V and a direct contrast to the large number of bite-sized chocolate cakes.

We played some games too. My favourite and the one that had everybody rolling with laughter was a mime-version of Chinese Whispers. Girls were in one room and boys in the other. Each group had to devise a mime to play to a member of the other group and that person would then mime it to the next person in the group and so on … some of the final versions were hilarious with absolutely no resemblance to the initial mime, leaving us all to wonder what could possibly be happening. We laughed until the tears ran down our faces.

At about midnight, the party wound down and before we did too, J walked the doggies outside and I put the glasses in the dishwasher. A perfect evening with our richest possessions: family and friends.