Crab Boil Party

Hellllloooooo.  We're home!  We had an amazing time, but we're both glad to be on our own turf again.  We missed the kids, we missed our weather, and we (I) missed the perfection that is the Pacific Northwest. Green, green, and more green.  I don't know how people can live surrounded by nothin' but brown.  I'd literally go insane.  I'll share some pictures next week, but I thought I'd do this post first, since the party photos are from before we left.

My sister decided to do a surprise party for my brother-in-law's birthday this year, and she came up with the Crab Boil theme. The hitch in the plan was having the party at the same house that the birthday boy lives in. Ya can't really prep much.  So she dropped all the groceries at my house the day before and did small things that she could hide at home.  But other than that, we busted everything out in three hours.  The Dad and the brother-in-law went golfing and we got to work doing all the food, decorating, and set up.

For appetizers, she did a cheese platter, meats, pate, bread, mixed nuts, olives, and veggies with hummus.

For drinks, she made a pitcher of Vodka Lemonade with lemons and mint.

She also had sparkling water, sparkling juice, beer, and wine.

His step-sister was assigned the blackboard and it turned out really cute.

For flowers, she had mason jars ready to go and I cut flowers and greens from the yard to fill them.

The place mats were cut out of paper bags and the place cards were made from lemons and leaves.

I hauled all my old-fashioned tablecloths over and my mom donated a giant roll of wax-backed freezer paper to go down the middle of the tables.

Rolls of paper towels went into terra cotta pots.

The tables looked so pretty.

She had cloth napkins and clothespins for bibs.

For dinner, she had found a crab boil recipe that incorporated more veggies than what you typically see, which I was super stoked about, not being a seafood fan.

In addition to crab and shrimp, there was sausage, corn on the cob, artichokes, celery, red potatoes, asparagus, lemons, green onions and garlic.

Everything went in pretty much whole.

The artichokes and garlic were my favorite.

She also had huge chunks of baguettes on the table, as well as melted butter and a spicy garlic-vinegar concoction.

I ate my weight, at least.

My cousin and his wife brought the whole set up for cooking.

Check out this spread.

Insane, right?

And once the sun went down, the lights were so pretty.

For dessert, my sister asked me to make the Cheesecake In A Jar recipe.

I did both the chocolate and the plain, and then she had macaroons, berries, and salted caramel to go on top.

If you haven't tried the recipe yet, you should probably hurry up and get on that.

And there ya have it.

A surprise birthday Crab Boil that you can pull off in under three hours.

Tomorrow is the last day of school.

We will be celebrating house party-style with The Mom Club (and husbands and kids) with dinner and drinks.

And I'm bringin' my newly discovered shot.

I'm not a hard liquor girl, and I'm definitely not a shot girl, but this one just may be the best thing I've ever had.

At least it was when it was 112 degrees on vacation.

If it still tastes as good as I remember it, I'll share next week.

Please see my sidebar for the parties I link up to.