SusieL – Mother’s Birthday Luncheon 2018!!!

The 7th Annual Mother’s Birthday luncheon is a wrap & I think one of the best ones! (I think that every year, though! And I’m finally getting around to posting about it!) Fourteen guests and a “drive by” (Ashley’s daughter’s birthday is the same day (she was 15 this year!), so she stops by for a few minutes.) Another guest had to cancel at the last minute, since her 92 year old mother fell & was in the hospital. As usual, I’m always sad when I realize I didn’t get many (or any) pictures. But then again, it’s about living in the moment rather than getting all those selfies & food photos for social media, right?

Each year I snail mail real, live, invitations. This was this year’s invitation – more details here.

Things seemed to be on schedule until ~12:30 the day before… when I had peeled eggs for deviled eggs & put the shells in the garbage disposal. I did not know you’re not supposed to do this. I’ve been doing this all my life, but this day, I had peeled 42 eggs – enough for 16 guests plus several more for Bob, our dogs and me.

And… the sink stopped up.

However, the plumber was here within an hour of calling. But this did set my schedule back several hours. As a result, the standard dessert (Rave Reviews Cupcakes) was served as “Nude cupcakes” this year, since I was running short on time & decided to not put frosting on them. Several people often scrape the frosting off anyway, so I figured why worry about it.

This year’s menu consisted of:

Baked Brie (With cranberries)

Manicotti (recipe received from a good friend, many years ago)

Mushroom Stroganoff

Deviled Eggs

Tossed Green Salad

Quinoa Salad (better than Costco’s!)

Macarons (filled with Nutella & Marshmallow Fluff)

Rave Reviews Cupcakes (served nekkid this year – the cupcakes were nekkid, not the hostess! WHEW!!!)

Wild Tropical Punch fruit tea (a Steeped Tea blend)

Infused water (infused with strawberries & cucumbers)

Champagne Punch

Favors were “homemade” Post-It notepad holders & pens, vials of Young Living’s Purification blend essential oil, (this is one of my all time fav-o-rite oils!) and “Fun Size” packages of peanut M&Ms. (My mother loved See’s candy, Oreos and… M&Ms!)

With respect to the favors, most of us are at an age where we don’t need more sh, err.. crap/stuff so I try to think of something useful or “regiftable”. I liked the idea of Post-It note holders with pens. (I found the idea on Pinterest) and even did a trial run for friends & family for Easter.

The favor “bag tags” were made with the Cricut, so they matched the theme of the invitations. (BTW, I’m having a lot of fun with this multi color light box!)

Since there are always guests who don’t know everyone, name tags are helpful. My friend Bev got me hooked on BadgeAMinit. It’s kind of a convoluted and yet kind of genius and (relatively) inexpensive way to make badges. So this year, I made the name tags/badges and they matched the invitations. (I will post more on this later.)