My favorite kind of favorite

I am a girl who likes to put on sparkly things, a new dress and go out. I love new (and favorite old) restaurants. I adore wandering through unfamiliar places. If you invited me out, I wouldn’t care where we were going…I just like to go. For a  drive, out to lunch, to a movie, to target, to the bookstore or a shady spot in a park. I’ve been known to drive a couple of hours to have lunch with a friend or buy bath scrub.

But I completely dig staying in too….if I can complicate it.

A couple of years ago my wish list consisted of mostly one thing…a table for our living room. Dinner with the kids is a pretty regular thing but there are just some nights where I can’t get through cutting up food, spilled drinks, and missing forks fast enough. Some nights I want to feed them quickly,  fulfill my legal obligation as fast as possible, and am not about to touch the boxed mac and cheese they have been begging for.  I only want to cut up food a bite at a time and sit through the entire meal. On those nights, I set the table in the living room and we linger. Real food, beautiful dishes, and cloth napkins. Sans kids.

There seems to be something magical about a night of yummy food, few interruptions, conversation that flows and the time together being the most important thing. There is always this really lovely moment where it occurs to who ever is hanging out that this is for them…that they were worth the trouble. Sometimes the mood is absolutely perfect and you are keenly aware that it isn’t something easily manufactured. It’s my favoritist favorite that I love to do for my favorite people.

Last night D came over for girl’s night in. (Daddy’s in Austin, Grandma’s in Tulsa) We’d made plans to watch a movie and hang out on the couch. I made plans for some special treats.

So I wandered though a store or two and picked out some of our favorite treats. A little time in the kitchen and fifteen different arrangements later…we had this:

(click pic to  zoom)

I feel the need to clarify somethings:

♥ Everything was in miniature.

♥There is only 3.4 fl oz in those Ben & Jerry’s. (And we forgot to eat them)

♥Those little martini glasses only hold three watermelon balls.

♥Those watermelon balls are deliciously marinated but under no circumstances should you make extra.

♥You’ll be tempted to just have one… on a warm fall afternoon…even when you would never normally consider having a shot of vodka.

♥Those pink buckets of popcorn were treated to a lovely coating of gorgonzola butter…which they just won’t do for you at the theater.

♥Bacon wrapped jalepenos didn’t make the shot. But they rounded out the sweet~salty ~spicy combo. Neither did pink lemonade in stemmed glasses.

♥The twizzlers (cut in half) didn’t survive the children walking by during the beauty shot process. They were replaced with more m&m’s.

♥The grapes & mushrooms elevate the whole set up to health food. ( The rest might fall in the mental health category).

♥My kids were totally jealous that they had to go to bed and are scheming up scenarios when they’ll need Mama to make a tasting platter for them.

I won’t tell you what Danielle said when she walked in…but maybe she’ll chime in…because I’m still laughing about it this morning.