If you don’t know by now New Year’s is a big time of the year for me. My birthday is on January 1st so growing up New Year’s Eve was full of traditions and after midnight full of birthday wishes and present opening (more on that in the next post).

This year we had plans to head to a few parties close by to drink, mingle, and watch the fireworks off the space needle. BUT I didn’t want to wait until 8 or 9 to start celebrating. Super last minute (on the 30th) I decided to host a small dinner party at my house and I decided it would be a 7 course affair with pairings. I researched all over and looked at some menus and substituted as I saw fit and finally came up with a wonderful menu. I cooked all the courses (after a moment of what was I thinking I was really excited to see it coming together) and my friends brought cheese for the cheese course and wine and champagne. Below is the menu:

A few more details: We had French Champagne, Washington dry Riesling, the Klinker Brick is a Zinfindel from California, Walker helped make the plum wine and we all picked plums for it last summer, the port is a 10 year Tawny from Kopke-a port maker in Porto that we visited on our honeymoon, and finally the grapefruit was served 2 ways-fresh and dried. It was seriously so fun. We enjoyed the rest of our evening but we all agreed this was our favorite part. It was especially funny when I started to get a bit tipsy about half way through was stopped paying any attention to when what was supposed to come out. I seriously can’t wait to do it again and I’ve been dreaming up some fun ideas.

A couple photos from the rest of the evening and a close up of Walker’s Michigan cuff links.