Woman in Real Life

With all of the planning, shopping, decorating and baking going on in the weeks leading up to Christmas, I don't know about you, but I often forget to even think about New Year's Eve. My thanks to Dannyelle of Life is a Party for forcing me (haha) to think about New Year's by making it the theme for our final Year of Feasting post of 2017.

A group of us did Year of Feasting posts for each season this year. Here are my spring, summer (Canada Day), and fall (Thanksgiving) blog posts. For my New Year's party, I chose a black and gold colour scheme, with a food theme of chocolate. Because chocolate. This theme assumes that people eat dinner before they come to your party. Or maybe not. Maybe they just gorge on chocolate. That would be okay for one night, no? Be sure to read to the bottom of this post to visit the other Year of Feasting bloggers' parties.

*This post is sponsored by Giant Tiger. All opinions are authentic and my own. Thank you for supporting the awesome companies that partner with Woman in Real Life!*

Summer is just about here and I am once again joining Dannyelle from Life is a Party and other Canadian bloggers to celebrate the season with a party. Last season, my party was a Celebrate Spring Party with a veggie burger toppings bar and vegan root beer floats.The idea is called "A Year of Feasting," and it involves holding one themed party per season in order to spend more time with family and/or friends. As Canada Day falls on July 1st, and it's the country's big 150th birthday party this year, we decided to theme our parties this month around Canada Day. Hopefully you will take away some ideas you can use to celebrate Canada Day in style. If you are American, just convert the maple leaves to stars and you're good to go! Be sure to check out the other bloggers' party ideas via the links at the bottom of this post. Such fabulous ideas!

My daughter's birthday is today, just slightly more than a week before Halloween. The timing opens up some fun possibilities for party themes. And indeed she chose to go with a Halloween theme this year, asking her friends to come to her party in costume.

We held the party on a Friday evening and I pretty much spent the entire day shopping and decorating. The kids and their dad helped out after school too. Here's the birthday girl adding washi tape flags to party straws, above.

My little girl's birthday falls within the month of October, opening up some fun possibilities for linking her birthday party with Halloween. This year, she wants her friends to come in costume and she also asked to create her own party invitations.

Her dad (who has worked at art galleries and museums in the past) suggested creating invitations using relief printing. The most common form of relief printing is woodcut, where you cut an image in a wood block, apply ink to the wood and print the inked image on paper. The carved areas remain free of ink and thus create white lines on the printed surface.

We had our own little family popcorn party recently, and it reminded me of this great gift I got from my sister last year at Christmas. If you are looking for something to give to a family, this is it!

She got us this Nostalgia popcorn maker, a couple of plastic popcorn buckets and a bunch of cardboard popcorn boxes. Add to that some popcorn kernels (hopefully organic -- GMO corn freaks me out), and you are set for your own popcorn party. I melted some vegan margarine on the stove and poured it on. Plus a little salt on top. Yummy!

My little girl turns eight this week. Instead of heading to the movie theatre or the bowling alley for her party like we usually do, we decided to party old school this weekend, inviting some of her girlfriends over to our house to celebrate.

When it comes to little girls, the party theme usually starts with the cake. Once she settled on a pumpkin cake, it was all simple from there. There's certainly no shortage of pumpkin-themed items in stores right now!

In my earlier post today, about Papa's birthday party, I mentioned that we generally end parties with a bit of live music. Here is a short (poor quality) video of brother-in-law #1 singing and playing guitar, with my husband also playing guitar.

As I mentioned the other day, we recently celebrated my father-in-law's 75th birthday and the end of his chemotherapy treatments. We enjoyed a lovely outdoor party at my sister-in-law's country home. For part one pictures, click here.

Papa's eight grandchildren were thrilled to be together and in a place with lots of fun activities to do. Here's my daughter making use of the tire swing.
 They also enjoyed the trampoline.
 And played baseball. Impressive that brother-in-law #1 can play with a drink in his hand, huh?
In an earlier look at my sister-in-law's home, I showed you some of their many animals. This little doggie, above, is a new addition to the group. After an extensive search that turned up no owners, they figure someone abandoned her on this country road. She couldn't have happened on a better place. My sister-in-law cannot turn any animal away.

And this dog certainly appreciates it. She sticks to my SIL like glue, following her everywhere and even waiting outside the bathroom door. The funny thing is, whenever she couldn't find her new mom at the party, she went straight for her mom's sister, pictured above, bottom right. Not so much of a dog lover as her sister, my other SIL put up with the attention nevertheless.

An interesting story: My SIL decided to call this little gal Coco, even though her kids wanted to use another name. She then discovered that a previous owner had written Coco faintly inside the dog's collar.
Maple, who joined the family as a puppy last December, is becoming GIGANTIC. She is one lucky dog, and makes good use of her time, following the kids, following the chickens and wading in the pond.
 Unfortunately, I think she is hunting for frogs. I didn't stick around to find out.
 I think my brother-in-law might have slightly overstocked the pond with frogs. What do you think?
 With four children in the house, I can understand the sign that my SIL has displayed.
Their garlic crop is impressive. That's about 3,000 bulbs, most of which will be replanted so that they can start selling in the future.
 Here is Papa enjoying his party, along with his brother-in-law.
 Two of Papa's sisters.
Brother-in-law #2, our host, with after dinner drinks. Both of my (Italian) sisters-in-law married redheads from the East Coast of Canada. And, their brother married someone whose parents come from Nova Scotia (that would be me).

I have received a few great pieces of antique furniture from my parents. One of my favourites is this sideboard. There's just something about furniture with feet.

When I was growing up, this was in our basement, in the "Blue Room." We called it that because the carpet was blue, as was the sectional couch. The walls were panelled in grey.

My parents stored numerous seemingly random items inside the sideboard. The top was used primarily as a bar. They even had a sign above it that said "Peter's Private Bar." My parents and their friends knew how to party, and a fully stocked bar was a given. Here's my dad 25 years ago at his 60th birthday party, rocking his kilt and playing the vacuum as a guitar (or maybe a fiddle). You can see the sideboard on the right, topped with all kinds of drinks.


The sideboard is in my basement now, and it houses all kinds of dishes, many of them given to me by my parents. This summer we have embarked on a big basement clean-up and I have come across a number of drinkware items that my mom and dad have given me.

I shared some other favourite vintage drinkware before in my Drinking Buddies post.

Here are the "new" items I have unearthed in storage.

I had no time to search for treasures at the thrift store this weekend. We had a full schedule of events. More about that on Friday.

In the meantime, I am preparing for a family gathering we are going to host next weekend. I am making an effort to use some of the vintage serving dishes I have acquired from my parents over the years.

They have lots of drinkware from the seventies. Good times, I guess.

I do recall crashing on a couch or spare bed next to my sister quite a few times while they partied, and I say good for them!

Here are some of the drinking aids they have given to me, including my favourite set, above.



Linking up with these wonderful blogs: Hey What's For Dinner Mom? and My 1929 Charmer and Coastal Charm and Beez Rental Designs and Knick of Time and Her Library Adventures

That's me, wondering where the years went.