Gram's Birthday Party

If there is one thing that I love, it's throwing parties, especially when it's a Birthday Party for my Grandma, or Gram as Suzi and I call her. Her birthday was May 20th and we decided to have a dinner party at our house (I say "we" because Suzi and I planned everything together). Jeremy was out of town for another friend's 30th birthday party in Vegas, so I cleaned and prepped and moved furniture all by myself...anyone feel sorry for me yet? Anyway, everything turned out better than expected and we had a fantastic night together. We served pasta from Gregorio's in Carlsbad, the same place where Suzi and Mike's rehearsal dinner was and, as always, it was amazing and fed our household and the McDonnell household for a few days afterwards.

Now, for the best part - the cake. I love decorating cakes, but am usually a straight-out-of-the-box kinda girl. However, as I have been exploring blog land, I came across a recipe for peanut butter chocolate ganache cake, which happens to be one of Gram's favorites. Let me tell you, I don't think that I can ever go back to"box cake" after making this delicious treat, I loved it so much I *might* have made myself a little sick eating the batterwhile making it the night before the party...oops!

The table was decorated with 75 cent table cloths from party city, I've learned that if you just pull the plastic apart, but don't tear it, it looks ruffled. Then we put a brown cloth tablecloth over the top of the plastic one, so that the ruffles peeked out from underneath.

The placemats came from scrapbook paper from The Papersource - one of my favorite places EVER. And Suzi created the cutest little namecards, as she always does for big family gatherings.

We also took some old pictures of Gram from when my mom was little and strung them on a ribbon over the fireplace. Wasn't she a classic beauty? I think so!

When the party was all over, this is what I was left with...I for half a second I was dreading cleaning everything up, but then I remembered the awesome time that we had and it was totally worth it!

I might have also remembered what a weenie I am when Jeremy is gone and how I don't sleep very well when he isn't here. I know ME! NOT sleeping well! It's pretty much unheard of, and I would like you all to know that I was perfectly fine sleeping by myself before I met the hubs, but now I am used to him tossing and turning and snorting and whatever he does that makes it seem soooo quiet when he isn't here. Needless, to say I was very happy when he got home the next day and I was able to sleep pretty well after cleaning up that mess!

So, overall, I would say that it was a great success, as was the music selection. We spent the evening listening to The Girl From Ipanema pandora station and you may think that I'm a little crazy, but I love it and apparently my grandparents do too haha! Try it out, you might just like it...