Family Style Reception

This weekend seemed like one of our busiest yet! My brother's wedding reception was Sunday along with my sister's graduation party, coupled together for a party hosting 250+. We rented out a local park and several pavilions and did the whole thing family style.

Family style = DIY style.

Saturday was an insanely busy day wrapping all the food prep that had been going on all week. I whipped out 24 dozen cookies Saturday morning and 15 pounds of potato salad and 5 massive batches of homemade hummus later that night. This is what 24 dozen cookies looks like:


We also did about 30lbs of shredded chicken (Italian and BBQ), meatballs pasta salad, broccoli salad, fruit salad, tapioca salad, jello salad (Iowa traditions) veggie trays, cheese platters, chips, 7 layer bean dip, shrimp dip and quiches galore.

Dessert was iced and classic sugar cookies, no bake peanut cookies, no-bake chocolate cookies, chocolate chip butterscotch chip cookies, peanut butter kiss cookies, rice krispy bars, mint brownies and wedding/graduation cake.

No one should have gone home hungry!

We also did homemade lemonade and ice tea.

I'll have to look and see if I have any pictures from the event, I spent most of the party restocking food intermixed with chatting with some of the guests.

Amidst the food prep on Saturday, we also managed to get nearly all the upper kitchen cabinets installed (!!!) as well as make the Hockey season opener for Hubs. Pictures coming soon of the new kitchen additions (see here for the before pics)!

It was quite a busy day! I was hurting pretty bad by Saturday night. You can imagine my dismay at 11pm when I heard family that had never seen our house would be stopping by the next morning to get a tour.

Que me scrambling around frantically that night and the next morning before they arrived! Hubs was a big help and thankfully the house wasn't in too much disarray. Really I shouldn't have worried much, once people see the shoe closet...they don't seem to focus on much else! The bright side though was coming home and collapsing into bed in a clean house late that night after clean-up and putting everything away. Now if it can just stay that way until the next party!

How was everyone's weekend?