Weekend Celebration

Hello Lovelies, 

This weekend we had a little family celebration for my Auntie M's 90th birthday, but as Auntie P wasn't sure whether the weather would hold we skipped on over to her house the day before and popped up our party tent.

After doing the easy bit of raising it, my Cousin and Auntie decorated it with a lovely pink and pale green theme with sweet little flower arrangements.  Luckily the day was sunny and hot so we had to take down all the sides to try and feel the breeze as we were baking. 

When the party began all the family stood around sipping rosé champagne and various other drinks in the sun while canapés were being passed around by various people including myself, all that waitressing finally paid off!
Everyone was nibbling on yummy blinis with caviar and smoked salmon, olives, oatcakes and mackerel pâté and cantaloupe melon wrapped in parma ham. 

When we sat down I admired the handy work of the flowers and place cards, I was supposed to write them, but as my cousin didn't get back in time from her last minute shopping trip for me to do them so someone else  wrote them all out, because of this I can't claim to have this italic prowess.

Below is a snap of the special lady of the day, my Palestinian born Auntie M who was celebrating her 90th birthday, she is such an amazing lady who is just full of stories.  At the tender age of 23 I can't quite wrap my head around being on this planet for 90 years, she has seen such changes in the world and has seen and experienced so many different things and is a wonderful lady.   

We then all sat down to a scrumptious lunch that everyone had contributed to.

There was a scrummy array of salads, couscous with roasted veg and feta, prawns with a squeeze of lemon and new potatoes. 

The most colourful of the dishes had to be a gorgeous Insalata Caprese, it is one of my favourite summer salads and is so pretty with its contrasting colours from the white buffalo mozzarella, to the bright red tomatoes and the green of the basil.  

My Auntie P had cooked a lovely poached salmon and her famous coronation chicken, I am a fish lover and can't resist good salmon. 

My brother really enjoyed the meal which was very obvious from his plateful of food!

Pudding was another table full of delights, there was a banoffee pie (one of my favourites), a toffee meringue roulade and Grandmas Pineapple crush recipe which is a cause of much discussion in our family as when she died and we looked at her cookbook the recipe for said pudding has quantities that are wrong and just wouldn't make it, we all think she is up there looking down on us and laughing as we struggle to work it out.     

Our contribution to the party was the wine and raspberries from our local PYO my father and brother got up the morning of the party and went raspberry picking for an hour. 

It was so lovely to see family especially my cousins who are older than me with their own children, apparently parenthood means learning a whole new set of skills which apparently includes balloon modelling so my cousins husband made my brother a parrot, so he was rocking the pirate look, while my cousin K made me a pretty pink flower. 

Has anyone else got any family get togethers coming up?