February Feast Pot-Luck

Call it February Feast, or call it a Valentine's Party.... we hosted it this past weekend.  Last year, some of the neighbors here just didn't seem to be 'into' Valentine's Day, but those that came to last year's party appreciated the abundance of red and pink hearts and two Valentine trees dripping with hearts and cupids.

So this year, I thought I'd do away with the Valentine invitations (except for those that I was sure wouldn't mind getting a red-heart card in their mailbox) and I sent out invitation cards that said "A Hoot and a Holler."  Underneath that, I wrote "We're having a February Feast Pot-Luck Dinner."  Not a red heart in sight on those cards, but that didn't mean that this house wasn't smothered in Valentine decorations.

We had a smaller group than usual on Saturday night...... two couples were sick with whatever bug has been going around (that my husband and I caught last week and the week before), and two of the neighbors were out of town for the weekend.  One thing about living out here, the guest list isn't as long as we used to have (because there are fewer neighbors here)........ so when two or three can't be here, their absence is noted by everyone. When we lived in Clear Lake, I had a guest list of 40, so when a few people couldn't make it for any given party, no one else seemed to notice till days later because the house was so filled with people. 

However.......... before we got started on the pot-luck dinner on Saturday night, I quickly re-arranged chairs and place settings in the dining room so we could all be at the one long table rather than in three separate table-groupings.  Everything worked out fine, and the dining room table never stopped humming with talking and laughing and catching-up with the goings-on around our little community in these hills.  During dinner and dessert, no one seemed to even want to leave the dining room, except to get another sampling of the pot-luck dishes, or to try just one more taste of one of the desserts. The rule with desserts seems to be 'Take a small taste of everything and then go in for the kill with the one you liked the best.'

So... for next year's Valentine's Day......  I'm thinking that maybe the way to go is just to invite our Valentine-saavy friends here for a sit-down dinner at the dining room table (which seats 14 people with both leaves put into the table-top).  Honestly, if a country-themed invitation card saying "A Hoot and a Holler" doesn't get the attention of the neighbors out here, then nothing will.... at least not during the month of February when red-heart-phobia turns tractor-driving neighbors into quivering piles of jelly.