Sat Dec 23rd
On Thursday we had our school staff dinner at our place. This is the third year we have done it this way and everyone loves it. My son Mark is a chef and he loves the challenge of producing a dinner for up to 20 at home. Luckily I have a well equipped kitchen!!
We have had a very dry year, but would you believe the weather forecast for Thursday was a deluge - between 20 and 40mm. American readers, 25mm is an inch in your measurement. We always have the dinner outside because it is beautiful in December on our front lawn. We do not have the room inside to seat 20 people. So we were in a quandary and had several contingency plans in mind. 1. Clear the house of furniture or 2. Have it on the veranda.
We opted for the veranda and set up three tables - I have three sets of everything we needed. Don and I had a heated discussion about how we would set up the tables - his plan required 4 tables - and I have only 3 of everything. I won. As long as the weather was coming from the back of the house(south-west), we would be OK. Everyone arrived, admired the tables and stood around with nibbles and drinks. Just as we were about to sit down, the wind blew up - from the north and down came the rain. The outside row of chairs was drenched.
We hurriedly swung the tables around against the wall - the way Don originally suggested - dragged in an old wooden outdoor table, found a white table cloth, picked a bunch of hydrangeas which went into a jar and reset the 4th table.
After that things went swimmingly and no-one actually got wet. Food was brilliant, company fantastic anf the wine delicious. Anmd my garden adored the rain which was slow and steady all night and the next day - 27mm in all.
]The only thing that went wrong that night were the cheap cabndles I had bought from Ikea. Check out the photo. Now I have to figure a way to get all that wax out of my red tablecloths!!
On Thursday we had our school staff dinner at our place. This is the third year we have done it this way and everyone loves it. My son Mark is a chef and he loves the challenge of producing a dinner for up to 20 at home. Luckily I have a well equipped kitchen!!
We have had a very dry year, but would you believe the weather forecast for Thursday was a deluge - between 20 and 40mm. American readers, 25mm is an inch in your measurement. We always have the dinner outside because it is beautiful in December on our front lawn. We do not have the room inside to seat 20 people. So we were in a quandary and had several contingency plans in mind. 1. Clear the house of furniture or 2. Have it on the veranda.
We opted for the veranda and set up three tables - I have three sets of everything we needed. Don and I had a heated discussion about how we would set up the tables - his plan required 4 tables - and I have only 3 of everything. I won. As long as the weather was coming from the back of the house(south-west), we would be OK. Everyone arrived, admired the tables and stood around with nibbles and drinks. Just as we were about to sit down, the wind blew up - from the north and down came the rain. The outside row of chairs was drenched.
We hurriedly swung the tables around against the wall - the way Don originally suggested - dragged in an old wooden outdoor table, found a white table cloth, picked a bunch of hydrangeas which went into a jar and reset the 4th table.
After that things went swimmingly and no-one actually got wet. Food was brilliant, company fantastic anf the wine delicious. Anmd my garden adored the rain which was slow and steady all night and the next day - 27mm in all.
]The only thing that went wrong that night were the cheap cabndles I had bought from Ikea. Check out the photo. Now I have to figure a way to get all that wax out of my red tablecloths!!
Tables set up before the rain fell down.
Disastrous candles. Next time I'll buy decent ones. Not so sure about the tablecloths, though. You can't actually see all the wax in this photo, but it was everywhere by the end of the night.Have a wonderful Christmas everyone.
Sounds like another fun Staff night Liz, I hope you got the wax out of the table cloths. Maybe Shannon Lush can help?? cheers Pennie
ReplyDeleteSo glad the dinner went well Liz. Scrape all the wax you can off the tablecloths and then put layers of newspaper or any absorbent paper either side and iron them. Throw away each layer of paper as it absorbs the wax. It should almost all come out.
ReplyDeleteCheers Di