Stephen In Disguise: Holiday Cocktails

It's been nearly two months, but I'm back. At the beginning of December I threw my very first evening of fanciness. My mom offered to give to physical cocktail invitations, but I felt that for this occasion facebook invitations would be best. This way I could easily contact my guests and remind them to bring things and give them my number (I needed them to call me so I could sign them into my building. College life.)
Decorating for this event was not as hard as I suspected. I've always been big on Christmas; my room at home was crowded with nutcrackers, ornaments, and crafts from elementary school that are now too tacky to be seen, and luckily I was able to ship what I needed over to my apartment. By "ship" I mean put in my mom's car. When I was younger my brother and I wanted out own Christmas tree in the basement, so my parents bought us a seven foot artificial tree that we could decorate. It had been in the bag for three years now, so I brought it to my apartment. The gold and red balls that used to fill the tree are now used as hurricane vase decorations, so I was short on ornaments at first. I unpacked everything I brought (a wreath, a small tree, the seven foot tree, some ornaments, and a few table top things) and cleared my head of all of my usual Christmas decorating ideas. The wreath I usually hang on my bedroom door was now on the inside of my apartment door. In middle school (or maybe elementary school?) I covered it with ornaments, and I later added bells of different shapes and sizes. There was no theme to this wreath, just colors. I decided it was time to start from scratch. I stripped the wreath of everything (untied the ribbon, untwisted the pine cones, etc) and started fresh. My twelve year old self was horrified that I was breaking tradition. I wrapped the gold and white ribbon around the wreath several times. This was a much improved from the floppy bow weighed down by the large gold water drop ornaments which topped it years prior. I added a few pine cones and was pleased by the simplicity. Now I had more bells and ornaments for the tree! I waited for my roommates to return so we could do it together. Meanwhile, I decorated the smaller tree. It took the place of the pumpkin that sat on the sofa table in front on my mom's painting. I started to put ornaments on, but since I was going simpler I decided just to put on the gold and green ornaments. I topped it with a small teddy bear ornament. I used to get small potted trees every year, and I would attempt to plant them in my backyard, but it never ended well. With each tree came a bigger ornament (big for the size of the small tree, at least) which I kept. Instead of putting these on the little tree I used them as ornaments for the big tree. My one roommate found the other small ornaments I decided not to put on the small tree and started to put them on the big tree. I didn't want to tell him that they're too small for that tree, so I just let him do it. They filled up space nicely, but I probably wont put them up there again.
A week passed and as the party drew near I felt that the room was still missing a few things. Late one night my friend Ali and I watched The Santa Clause on ABCFamily and cut out paper snowflakes for her dorm. I went home and decided to make some for my room as well. I cut out about six and taped them together in the pattern of a wreath/large snowflake. This was flanked by a smaller wreath of curled paper and one of the snowflake scraps. They were more for background objects in pictures than anything. The next day I harvested a number of pine cones, holly branches, and other evergreens to fill the empty spaces. When my mom came down to drop off my peacoat and gold spray paint (my mom appears a lot in this blog) she helped arrange some of the greens. I don't have vases so we used empty sauce jars. I saw a picture on Martha of a pumpkin vase, so we tried something similar by sticking the holly branches into the top to give a vase like feeling. By sticking the branches directly into the pumpkin instead of cutting a hole the branches stood up straighter.
I bought entirely too much food. For some reason I didn't believe my friends would bring food, but they all brought a dish or bottle of something. There was too much food, though my friend Anna said in amazement, "There was food?" after seeing the facebook album. I don't know how to explain that one.
So the night of the party I went to see one of the one acts in the undergraduate festival after making sugar cookies to bring in the holiday season, as well as the birthday celebration of our one friend who was to be present that night. I was told it was only a half hour. After it ended I turned to my one friend and she said it was ten o'clock. I didn't think anything of it at first, then I thought she was joking, then I ran five blocks to get to my building where the first guest, the soon to be Birthday Boy (who we sang and presented a tray of birthday cookies to at midnight), was waiting. I signed him in and quickly dressed and uncovered the appetizers. More arrive to the sound of Michael Bublé's new Christmas album. Everyone looked great and brought delicious food, including chicken wrapped in bacon. Bacon is always the best choice. That freshman knows how to get it done. Also, put Reese's on toothpicks. What I learned this evening is that everything looks fancy when it's on a toothpick. It turns out that I didn't need to buy all of the bagel bites and spinach and flaky spinach pastry bites. I'll save them for the next party.
At two thirty the guests began to depart. I mentioned my plan to watch The Muppet Christmas Carol and it stirred excitement. Six of my friends stayed through the morning to watch it with me. They also cleaned up after the party? What is this life? I went to bed at five.

A few days later I candy striped the pole in my living room. I think it's festive.