A Party

Per usual, I was too wrapped up in my hostess duties to take photos of the people or the spread. So, here’s the table post-party, with the chairs back in place, so I can show the color scheme: bright yellow and dark olive green. I got it in my head that I simply HAD to use sunflowers, and fortunately I found some perfectly plump ones.  

What’s a GEICO party without GEICO gecko wine glass charms? Believe it or not, I obtained these at MY work. Yep, they advertise freaking everywhere, including through my organization, and sent these to our corporate relations folks. Oh yes, I got first dibs on all eight of them.

Simplifying: paper plates, paper napkins, plastic forks.

On Saturday, we hosted our annual GEICO party for the analysts (plus families) on the teams Chris manages. We were waaaaaay late in doing the party this year, and we paid for our procrastination with a balmy July temperature of 103 degrees.

So much for christening the new deck. This was an entirely indoor party, as you can imagine.

The whole event was a success. Chris’s coworkers are a sweet, witty, nerdy (in the best possible way) bunch, so it was a good crowd. I was pretty impressed everyone was willing to drive out to The Sticks for this little shindig, but the payoff for these city slickers was that they got to see some green rolling hills and nary a traffic signal was in sight.

Charlotte, predictably, basked in the center of attention and kept swiping food off the dining room table she had zero intention of actually eating. A smarter woman would have put everything on the island in the kitchen—too high for her grabby reaches.

Chris made pulled pork (North Carolina style) on the BBQ, which turned out amazing and was quite the hit. He also grilled up some burgers (grass-fed, local angus beef—again, an advantage of being in the country, y’all), turkey hot dogs for those who prefer bird, and vegetable kabobs. The guy made vinegar-based coleslaw (which is supposed to go ON TOP of the pulled-pork sandwiches, and I can confirm that some ‘slaw does indeed make a difference in yumminess) and guacamole from scratch. I made macaroni salad from a cooking magazine recipe, which Chris said—with a slightly insulting amount of surprise in his voice—turned out really good, strawberry cupcakes with Mama Opp’s buttercream frosting, and brownies. Oh, and I arranged a fruit platter.

As a bit of a gender role reversal, in our family, Chris is the one who has a tendency to, um, complicate parties like this one. Call me lazy, but I’m willing to buy a vegetable tray and dip from Costco. Chris would rather handpick each vegetable, lovingly peel and cut them, and then spend 2 hours flipping through cookbooks and magazines to find the PERFECT dip recipe. If he is missing the exact type of vinegar a recipe calls for, he will drive a couple towns over (with traffic signals!) to get it from Whole Foods, killing an enormous amount of time and driving me slightly batty. Sure, his method tastes better in the end, but we are two people with two full-time jobs and a toddler running around, the nearest Costco or grocery store is 30 minutes away, and one of us is growing a baby and has to SIT DOWN every 3 hours or so. Thus, I don’t think anybody begrudges pre-cut veggies. In Chris’s defense, he didn’t argue with me about the veggie platter.

I also voted for paper plates, which Chris grudgingly went along with and then eventually agreed was a brilliant move. I mean, I heart a proper table with plates that can’t be thrown away, but this was essentially a BBQ. Honestly, I’m so anti-paper plate that I think this is the first time I ever bought them, but for a BBQ, they seemed totally reasonable to me. I also opted for plastic forks, and again, I WAS RIGHT. Other complications? Chris wanted to grill chicken, which I said was unnecessary (I won that battle by virtue of the fact that we simply ran out of time), and I tried to talk him out of the burgers (I mean, we had about a gazillion pounds of pulled pork!), which he made anyway. He later admitted that burgers (which of course he gourmeted up) might have been unnecessary.

I tend to forget how much work events like these are, and I think I probably overdid it a bit, if the woozy lightheadedness at the actual party was any indication. (When I whispered to Chris I was sneaking upstairs for 5 minutes because I didn’t feel well, he panicked and asked if I thought the mayo had gone bad. I assured him that I had bought new mayonnaise after the lack of refrigeration the weekend before and that this was strictly a head thing.) Possibly overdoing it aside, it’s fun to flex our entertaining muscles, especially since we get to do it so rarely these days. I mean, anything that allows me to select a color scheme is fun in my book.

All in all, a success. Done! Before the second child arrives! And with lots of yummy leftovers . . .