Engagement Party!

I suck at taking pictures, is what it comes down to it.  The thing is, if you take pictures during your own party, you end up missing out on the party.  Since it was only 2 hours, I opted for only taking these pictures from a distance and then spent the time hanging out with everyone.

From a distance

One of the tables

I think it went really well!

The menu was cake, brownies, fruit, cookies, wine, soda and water.  The water was actually the most popular drink because it was quite hot.  I put out candles in my little pots I made in ceramics and flowers in the vases I made.  The candles worked out really well because they melted down and turned the pot into a candle!  So now I have useful little candles instead of stupid little useless pots.  I had my little ipod speakers playing in the background.

I think everyone had a nice time :)  It was laid back, mostly.  Someone asked if we were going to do toasts or something, but it's weird if we host a party and then make people toast us!  Someone else asked if we were going to have a cake, but again I thought it would be weird to have a party and buy our own cake so everyone could congratulate us.  SO... we had cake, but it was cut up and distributed around (I made the cake from a mix......... but I did make the icing myself, apparently I got a lot of compliments about it).

We started making a schedule for seeing people before we leave at the party.  I think we made 4 dates at the party!  Haha!  This was an engagement/going-away party so it was happy and sad at the same time.

It was only two hours but I think that was a good amount of time.  People came and went, a lot of people had apparently double-booked their evening!  But it was good, and I am glad we got to see everyone at least one more time before we head out.  Even my old roommate came by, and I haven't seen her in at least 7 or 8 months.

Yay :)

Posting on Shabbat

I'm taking advantage of how I'm not shomer shabbat yet by posting on Shabbat to tell you...

I added some blogs to my link list so if you want to check them out, they're on the right column at the bottom.  Some of them have little snippets of their most recent entries and some are just listed, but all of them are neat!

Also, I want to mention that JewishGuy broke into the babka last night even though it was supposed to be for the party.  Babka just doesn't last long in this house.  Luckily he only took a small piece (and gave some to me) so we should have enough.

(We are planning to go shomer shabbat once we get to Chicago so just two weekends left! haha)

Engagement Party Planning......?

Last week someone text messaged me and asked if I was free to hang out.  I said that I was out of town so unfortunately no.  They replied, "Okay, well, see you on Sunday!"

I said to myself, "what's Sunday?"

Um... the engagement party!

Yes, with all of the craziness of traveling to Israel, Chicago and Maryland, trying to decide on how to move to Chicago, apartment silliness, and other things, I had totally forgotten about our engagement party.  I had all these plans for fun decorations and crazy whoseemawhatsises.  But instead I find myself somewhat scrambling at the last minute.  Not really scrambling.  I am cool and collected like a seasoned event planner (I did do event planning for 2 1/2 years).

Today I went to the grocery store and picked out some wine and cookies.  I did get a babka because I like babkas, but I am going to try to keep this from looking like a standard Jewish community event, which is what I did for my job for 2 1/2 years.  You may see a recurring theme in my wedding planning - I don't want this thing to look like a similar thing I did for my job, or that thing to look like that event I did, etc.

Our party is going to be in the courtyard of our apartment complex.  It's really cute with a nice fountain and little tables with chairs and some small lights hidden in the bushes.  I'm planning on putting the food on one table and the wine and water on the other, with candles as the decorations.  I was going to make little candles but it looks like a lot of work and I'm kind of busy/lazy.  I'm also planning on making a little guestbook so people can leave us a good-bye note or something.  I don't know if I'll do that, JewishGuy made a remark about it, it might be a little cheesy to do that.

More on plans later, if there are more plans!