The Brunch

The brunch this year was a huge success, one of our best yet, and I'm so grateful.  I was really nervous. I was hosting in the house everyone has seen so beautifully decorated and prestinly kept by Diane.  Hosting Thanksgiving helped me start to get things organized, rearranged and cleaned up. I got the carpets cleaned on Monday, a little too close to Saturday for comfort, but they look amazing! Once they were dry Tuesday, we I started decorating and I'm really pleased with how it all turned out.   

Diane and I continue to work on finding the right balance of sweets and savories with the menu.  For the 20+ years she did this in GR's hometown, the ladies only wanted sweets.  Here there is a totally different mentality ... they want savories and only suppliment with sweets.  So I'm now only making one or two sweets, and leaving the rest to her, since that is still where her passion is.  This year we both cut back on the sweets (this is all I put out - huge success by the way - the rest in in the freezer waiting for another occassion) and pumped up the savories.  I fell a bit short on the savory end, so notes for next year::  make two spinach artichoke dips, 3 dozen turkey florentines is not enough - shoot for 6, we should probably have 3lbs of shrimp.  Two wild rice cassroles and three egg casseroles was perfect.  

We had beautiful weather this year, allowing many of our friends to attend. I think we estimated over 50 women came, and they came steddily throughout the morning and lingering well past 11 - love that! The last couple of years preparing for the brunch as been more stress than fun and excitement. I always enjoy it in the end, but after last year I was seriously questioning if it was worth the stress and output. Thankfully, this year was easier ... still a lot of work, but easier on both me and Diane. We made the event more manageable and asked for more stretegic help and I think it really helped reduce my stress level. So thankfully I think we're both really looking forward to next year!