Post-Valentine lunch party.....

That was today...... our Valentine's lunch which we had to cancel last weekend because of my bad back and the plumbing problems from the hard-freeze. There were nine of us around the dining room table this afternoon... our newest friends H & K were up in NY for the weekend, so they couldn't be here. Other than small dinner parties for four or six, this was the biggest group we've hosted here in this house. Not that nine people is a big group, especially since our Clear Lake party-guest list was nearly 40, and sometimes 60 for our Christmas parties.... but we thought we'd start out small and work our way up to a longer guest list.

K & B drove up from Houston to be here this afternoon, and our closest friends from our little hill community filled up the rest of the table. The dining room table was all decked out in red and pink, with hearts scattered on the table, heart-shaped candy boxes holding the vintage Valentine postcard-place cards..... and at each place setting for the ladies, I had red heart Mardi Gras necklaces. In the center of the table, my white Valentine tree covered in heart ornaments. If that table couldn't make everyone smile, then nothing else would have worked.

Before the lunch was even half over, one of our neighbors told us how perfectly grand it was to be here, and she hoped I would do all of this again for another occasion. (Well, that was my idea.... to get everyone here as excited about having parties as our friends in Clear Lake used to be.)

True to our party-style in the old house, we made this a pot-luck lunch, asking everyone to bring a covered dish or a dessert. As a result...... we had a first course of tossed salad and cold cocktail shrimp, then vegetable lasagna, spinach quiche, carrot and onion casserole, and pesto-cheese rolls. For dessert-- a killer chocolate cake, apple cinnamon cake, and pecan pie. Along with pineapple/grapefruit punch and sparkling cider, tea and coffee, I'd say we all had a wonderful feast in our dining room today.

Everyone went home with their own heart-shaped boxes of candy, their vintage postcard place cards, and their Mardi Gras heart necklaces.... and everyone said "When are we going to do this again?" Ahhh..... just what we always heard in Clear Lake. Our dining room was christened today with the first of many get-togethers.

The weather has quickly turned from winter to summer.... our neighbor B brought me a bouquet of yellow daffodils today.... she said they began blooming in her yard a couple of days ago. Well, it's nice to know that the hard freeze didn't kill all the flowers. Pretty soon, our fields will be covered in wildflowers..... and I will be cutting them and putting them in vases all over the house. Yet another reason to celebrate--- "The wildflowers are blooming.... come to a party...."