Pop up dinner party

Last night Rick and I hosted a Pop up dinner party in San Francisco on the pier. The pier is one of my favorite places in the city. It is right down the street from my old office building so I spent many lunch breaks on the pier looking at the amazing views of the city and the Bay bridge. I also took my bridal pictures on the pier. I thought this would be a great place for my dinner party.

My dad was lovely enough to come up and play with the boys for us while we entertained. The boys love wrestling on the floor and playing cars with grandpa. This is one of the best parts about my dad, he knows how to play. However, it was no surprise when Crew woke up at his usual time and we went to change his diaper only to find it on backwards again (this wasn't the first time Crew has had his diaper on backwards). Not only did he watch the kids but we came home to a clean house, the kitchen was spotless. That was a dream come true. It was a pretty busy day yesterday in preperation for my party,  I ended up leaving the kitchen a disaster when I left. Thank you dad for making my night!

Rick and I carried our table, chairs, food, music, red balloon and all our utensils over to the pier and began our set up. It was a cowboy style pop up dinner party so we wore our most cowboyish clothes and recommended our guest do the same. We served all the courses in mason jars which was great for transporting food, clean up and serving purposes.

Our first course was a pasta salad with fresh mozzarella, tomatoes, artichoke hearts and olives. Our second course was a homemade chicken chili with sweet corn bread baked on top (baked in the mason jars). Baking them and sealing them in the mason jars allowed them to stay warm while traveling to the city and setting up. For dessert we had a banana cream dessert with homemade caramel sauce.

I'm not a country music fan but I do love Jackie Greene which is kind of cowboy/rock-a-billy music so we had some Jackie Greene playing as well as some alternative bands that have a country sounding song - such as Social Distortion, Cake, Chris Issac, Norah Jones etc.

We ate dinner and chatted, enjoyed our surroundings and played a game of truth or dare. You had to pick a truth or dare from the jar.

 Pictures from our party!

 I made some cowboy invitations with a little map on how to get to the pier.

 Our table set up at the end of the pier. The napkin rings had the menu on it and I made little burlap thank you bags with butter peppermints to match the burlap table cloth.

These were the lovely couples that joined us:
Brooke and Jon

Andrew and Cassandre

 Scott and Cat

I had the red balloon with the pendant banner to help everyone find the right pier and spot.


Our group of friends with the beautiful view in the background.

Here are the little banana cream goodness desserts.

Here is the chili with the cornbread baked on top.

 It obviously became dark and we enjoyed all the city lights and the bridge.

Here are some pictures from our truth or dare game. Brooke making a mustache on her husband Jon with whip cream and licking it off.

 Cassandre riding her husband Andrew like a horse and saying Yeehaw.

Scott giving his wife Cat a raspberry on her neck.

 The girls dancing.

My picture of Andrew walking up to the old Chinese lady (who was catching crabs off the pier) and asking her for a hug didn't turn out so good. I'm not sure if she understood english but she turned him down.

PS - Rick's dare was he had to call someone and ask them if cows laugh does milk come out of there nose. Lucky for him he left his phone at home. He decided to use my phone. He was going to scroll through with his eyes closed and pick some random name. Oh, great who ever he called would most likely know it was my phone. Lucky for me he landed on an 866 number. When he finally reached a customer service guy (spanish speaking) he asked his question. The man was completely confused and kept asking him what he wanted. It made me laugh. It reminded me of the old days in the Stanford ward where we got our neighbor Jake to make prank calls for us while we listened and laughed.