The Open House

Yay! We have power! And now I can tell you all about the party. It was a smash! We went to church for first service and then raced home to set up, decorate the tables, put some tents over the food prep area and get things ready.
Salads went on the table in the dining room. People came in the front door to get salads and desserts and exited the back door to the tent and main course. It flowed pretty well.
Desserts were set up on the kitchen counter. See the little chocolate squares on a couple of the plates? Those were hubbys mocha cheesecake squares that were dipped in chocolate. I never could get a picture of the plates when they were full, people kept snitching them! Along with those we had a variety of home made cookies and, of course a cake for the graduate. CArrot cake with apricot filling from Costco, have you ever tried it? It is fabulous!

The tent in the backyard. This was set up the night before by a wonderful team of men from the church, and when it was over they took it all down and hauled it away. We have a great church family!

The main course? Grilled pizza! A big hit at our first daughters open house and catered by my dear sister and brother in law and their family! What a gift! Sister Penny helped out too. Here is how it goes....

Karen and Penny roll out the dough into personal size rounds.....

Clarence grills one side of the crust, flips it over so the cooked side is on top, and he and lovely Allison (his daughter, my niece) supervise as people write their name on the bottom of a paper plate and choose their toppings....
Then the pizzas go to this beautiful girl, niece Julianne, who grilles the last side and then hands it back to her sister to deliver to the person who made it at the table!

These are just a few of the pizzas people topped. Yum!

We had 175 to 200 people in the four hours we held the open house. Quite a crowd and what fun to get all our friends and family together in one place for a joyous celebration:>) As you can see, for the four hours of the party we had sunshine and blue skies. The temps were in the low 90's but we had a beautiful steady breeze that really made it pleasant.

We had everything packed up by the time the storm hit and the party was over! I had awakened at about 3 am that morning to heavy thunderstorms and prayed that God would give us good weather for the party. He did! We were without power until 4 am this morning and I feel so lucky to have it back. There are still thousands of homes that dont have power in our county. I will share Earl's Mocha cheesecake recipe later this week. It was big hit, even among people who proclaimed that they didnt like coffee. Now I need to go catch up on my visits to all of you. Thanks for sharing in the fun:>)