book exchange party recap:

Of course, Saturday was a bit of a crazy day trying to get everything ready in time... (Hubby was off in the wilderness hoping to slay wild beasts, so it was just me and the Pirate. My reinforcements aka my sweet, wonderful, sitter couldn't get to my house until 4:00 -which made for a not-so-productive morning.)

Dinner included: Chicken taco salads. The chicken taco part turned out fabulously! The salad part was also just about perfect, and would have been if I could have found some ripe avocados. 

Dessert was also a hit: homemade pumpkin pie & crust make by yours truly, along with this apple dessert recipe I found here. I skipped the pie-shell part, and just sliced the apples real thin, topped them off with brown sugar and cinnamon and popped them in a 350 oven for 15 minutes & that was it. Done and done. The easiest thing I've ever made and also pretty delicious. They were gone in approximately 45 seconds. I'm not kidding. We had ice cream to go with all this goodness too. 

After dinner everyone gathered in the living room, selected a book marker I made with stolen paint sample cards, some ribbon and a hole puncher, and a notebook & pencil to keep track of titles they might be interested in reading.

Then the exchange game began. Instead of using numbers to take turns, I wrote the names of the paint samples on each book marker. It was more fun that way. Saying, "Sweet Baby Sunrose" was way better than calling for number 7.

In the end, everyone left saying what a great time they had, how wonderful the food was, and how we should do it all again sometime. So I'll take that as a success.