Every year one of our groups of friends organizes a Christmas Party… I’m sure some of you remember pics from last year. The party is technically called the “Erection Party”, to celebrate the erection/raising of the Christmas tree. The premise — everyone wears an ugly Christmas sweater or Christmas getup!

It’s always a lot of fun…

Amy and Kim did an amazing job of decorating their place…

I always enjoy the festive slippers and socks the most!

Christmas isn’t complete without a little tequila and a gift for the gift exchange game!

The gift exchange is always hilarious… as you can “steal” from each other a limited number of times and there is a definite strategy!

Allan wasn’t too happy since he always ends up with the most ridiculous gift every year… this year was no different… you can tell from the smile on his face that he loved his Jonas Brothers make-up gift pack.

I ended up pretty stoked about my red Olympic knit mittens! I actually wanted a pair. Yeah, I ended up wearing them the rest of the night.

The party wouldn’t be complete without several group photos, of course!

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In other news, I am flying out tonight to the Calgary airport where Allan and I will rent a car and drive to Golden, BC. We’ll be snowboarding and sightseeing two days at Kicking Horse Ski Resort for their opening weekend… and possibly even doing some backcountry hiking and boarding with Canadian Powder Adventures! We’ll be staying at the Canyon Ridge Lodge for two nights and the Copper Horse Lodge for a night. Then it’s a mad dash in the morning to drive back through Banff and snowboard at Sunshine Village, and then fly back to Vancouver!

Yeaaaaah… I ended up packing way too much stuff. All you really need is your board, boots, and jacket right?

Phew! It’s going to be a busy weekend. We’ll have lots of photo and videos. Wohooo! Enjoy the weekend everyone!

There’s no possible way to capture a party properly in photos, especially when you are trying to host one… but we’ll do our best here. Thanks to John Biehler for graciously taking some photos during the event… they turned out great! Below you’ll see a mix of my photos and John’s photos. Hope you enjoy!

Photo Credit: John Biehler

As mentioned before, this past Friday, November 13th was my birthday party (on my actual birthday) as well as our (Allan and I) housewarming party. A 2-in-1 party that was a lot of fun to prepare for and host.

I would say that it was a success! Allan and I sat down and did the numbers. Over 230 people attended… a 50L of Granville Island “Island Lager” (approximately 146 bottles of beer… thank you Matty and Granville Island Brewery!) completely tapped, an additional 150 bottles of beer consumed, 4 x 1.75L bottles of Grey Goose, 4 bottles of Zaya rum, 4 boxes of Patron tequila, 4 bottles of Giffard’s Manzana Verde, a bottle of Hennessey XO cognac, Jameson 18 Irish Whiskey, and Glenfiddich 18 Scotch whiskey… completely drained. Not to mention over 40 more full bottles of liquor completely consumed. Phew! I would say we had some heavy drinkers at the party

Not to mention over 100 bottles and cans of mixers drained…

A fridge full of food eaten…

20 portions of cheese…

Even more beer and liquor brought by friends consumed…

4 bushels of mint used in cocktails…

10 pounds of chocolate…

50 homemade chocolate creme brulees…

Hundreds of bamboo plates, cutlery and napkins…

Over 20 sliced french baguettes, served with double creme d’Affinois brie and an assortment of jellies and toppings…

One litre of bocconcini with roasted tomatoes, basil, and flat leaf parsely…

40 boxes of homemade noodles and chicken…

20 beef tenderloin steaks…

50 macaroni and cheese muffins…

Many, many bags of popcorn…

15 homemade pizzas served…

Photo Credit: John Biehler

Over 100 homemade cookies baked on the spot and eaten…

Dozens of petit fours (bought, not made)… and that’s a lot of food!

Photo Credit: John Biehler

We had the outside patio decorated with white lights, dozens of candles and lanterns, and a couple patio heaters to stay warm! Luckily it didn’t rain so we didn’t need to put up the tent!

Photo Credit: John Biehler

And then, there were the drinks…

Freshly made mojitos…

Whiskey sours and whiskey on the rocks…

My signature martini (watermelon, pomegranate juice, apple liqueur, Grey Goose, lime, lemon, and mint… all blended with ice)…

Photo Credit: John Biehler

Photo Credit: John Biehler

Many chocolate martinis served…

A “pom cosmo”…

Rum rita…

Irish coffee served with Jameson 18 whiskey, Italian Bodom-brewed coffee, freshly whipped cream, brown sugar, and topped with Butter vanilla and coffee marshmallows toasted with a torch…

Irish car bombs…

Dark chocolate creme brulees, torched…

The full drink list for the party… (needless to say I spent the entire time behind the bar)

The dress I wore to the party… a pink and purple silk party dress by Meghan Los Angeles. Yes, it’s totally over the top and ridiculous, and definitely a “It’s My Party and I’ll Cry if I Want To” dress… but I couldn’t resist.

Here’s the back of the dress… I really loved the bow and the low back on it!

Here’s the jewelry I wore… beautiful custom-made handcrafted silver crocheted pink Swarovski jewelry by Isabella Diamond here in Vancouver. The ring even lasted through all the drink mixing, haha.

Photo Credit: John Biehler

I also got to meet some fabulous bloggers in Vancouver for the first time… thanks to Raul, Liv, Greg, Mozy, Aidan, Kimm, Tyler, John, Jerk, Tawcan, and Josh for coming out!

Photo Credit: John Biehler

All in all the party was a lot of fun. We finally finished our apartment (pictures coming soon), and it was great to see all our friends out. Allan and I both had an amazing time. Thanks for reading this huge long post!

Yesterday Allan and I were invited by the wonderful Shelley (Communications Director for Top Table Restaurants) to a sunset party at Vancouver’s Shangri-La Hotel. It was a fun-filled classy evening celebrating the launch of Chef James Walt’s cookbook for the Whistler restaurant Araxi. Yes, of Hell’s Kitchen fame.

Araxi has been one of my favourite restaurants for many, many years now… and we always try to visit a couple times a year. I’d been hearing about this cookbook for months now, and I was so excited to hear that all guests were receiving a signed copy of the cookbook! I absolutely cannot wait to make some recipes from the book. I’ll make sure to post photos when I do.

The party was on the 58th floor in a suite overlooking our beautiful city. Our ears were popping like crazy in the elevator. The Shangri-La is so tall that it really feels like you are looking down on the other high rises.

Not to mention we were treated to a stunning sunset throughout the event.

Guests were served a nice selection of wine, and some delicious canapes prepared by Chef James Walt and the team from Araxi. My favourite was definitely the braised short rib, but Allan sure thinks the tuna was the winner.

There were some beautiful desserts as well… I had my fair share of chocolates that evening.

There was lots of mingling, and it was great to meet some of the food critics, magazine editors, chefs, and other professionals in the food industry. Not to mention getting to finally meet Miss 604 in person, and the lovely Keira-Anne.

At the end of the event, Chef James Walt began signing books for everyone. It was great to talk to him again outside of Araxi and get a photo with him. Excuse my stupid look here, I’m pretty sure I was way too excited to get a picture with him.

He lives in Pemberton (near the farms, on a farm…) and is big on local produce and sustainability as I mentioned in my previous post on Araxi.

We worked up an appetite with all the food teasers, and so we stopped in for a quick bite at the Shangri-La’s Lobby Lounge. We had a couple cocktails, appetizers, and some yummy mains and desserts. Pretty good for bar food!

What a fun night! Thanks to Shelley, Chef James Walt, and Araxi for throwing a fabulous party.

After a couple months of basically being a recluse and feeling rather cooped up, we finally threw a small party. My skin has mostly cleared up now, and things are looking much brighter for the future. I’m feeling very happy these days. Plus, in 4 days I’ll be in Costa Rica!

It was Allan’s birthday on Sunday so we decided to have a little get-together over at our place on Saturday night.

Allan likes beer, so we stocked the fridge full of his favourite beers for the party.

There was barely any room in the fridge for food, including the fridge door!

Allan got a new BBQ for his birthday and we finally made use of our new patio. We got the Weber Q300 barbecue and we LOVE it! It heats up really hot, really fast and evenly distributes the heat no matter how high or low. It’s also really portable, and has a good-sized cooking surface. Good value, too! (Despite us looking all over town and them being sold out EVERYWHERE we finally found it in a small independent and I haggled till the bitter end for a good price)

We provided some small appies for the party. I made up some cheese and bread spreads. Pictured here is the double cream brie and red pepper jelly, fig spread with parmigiano reggiano, smoked mozzarella and ham, and cheddar.

We cooked up some 3-night marinaded Maui-style ribs from Granville Island, along with homemade hamburgers, ribeye steak and beef filet mignons. Sides were risotto and grilled veggies.

There weren’t many leftovers!

I also found THE BEST rum EVER in the liquor store the other day. I’ve never had expensive rum before and wow, is it ever worth it. It’s called Zaya Gran Reserva, aged 12 years and handcrafted in Trinidad & Tobago. 5 times distilled. It is really, REALLY good. We made some mojitos from it, although some people preferred to just sip it.

Shelley McArthur, AWESOME Communications Director from Top Table Restaurants (some of my fave restaurants in BC) sent me this incredible mojito recipe from Keith Trusler, Bar Manager at Blue Water Cafe. Top Table has some of the best bartenders in BC so definitely check out Araxi, Blue Water Cafe, West, or Cin Cin for divine drinks. The taste is all in the careful preparation! We used the Zaya Rum, but the Havana Club rum still tastes great for this recipe:

Blue Water Cafe Mojito, by Keith Trusler

1/2 lime, divided into 8ths
10 mint leaves, bruised to release flavour (roll into a ball and clap with your hands)
1 1/2 ounces Havana Club Anejo Reserva Rum
Club Soda and Crushed Ice

In a tall glass, muddle lime and mint with the simple syrup. Top with crushed ice. Pour in rum and stir together. Top with club soda. Enjoy!

Sooo good.

After mixing drinks for a while, I decided to sit down and believe it or not the BOYS got into the kitchen and started mixing up their own drinks.

One of the best ones was the watermelon martini made with Grey Goose, Sourz and Simple Syrup. Yum!

Other not-so-good drinks the boys made was mixes of beer and gin and gatorade. Not so good.

Believe it or not, there are THREE people on this chair, haha.

Here they are mixing up more drinks.

Here we are outside, after inspecting a huge beetle that was on the porch.

It was a great night! Lots of food, drinks, and fun. It was great to have some of our friends over too, since it had been a while

What did you do this weekend?

And so begins the week of Christmas parties! Saturday was Amy’s Erection Christmas party as I mentioned.. and it was a lot of fun!  This was only my second Erection party since I’m new to the group, although Amy’s been organizing them for a long time now. This Friday there will be TWO Christmas parties in one night (both my work party and Allan’s work party) so it’s going to be a hectic time party hopping!

Something that really struck me was how disappointed I was with my low-light photos. Most of my photos turned out too dark, blurry and grainy. I really need more experiencing shooting people in low-light conditions without any extra lighting. Do you guys have any tips?

Crista and I decided to make mojitos for the party… and yes, they taste delicious even though it’s not the summer! We made them with Havana Club rum, lots of mint, lots of lime, and some organic ginger ale that tastes like real ginger. Not for everyone, but I like it!

Tara and I… I wore a Christmas pajama top, santa hat and red Christmas slippers.

Adam and Amy… Adam came all the way up from San Francisco to visit Amy!

Trevor had a huge candy cane .. uh, cane! Awesome!

Ben and Alissa brought the baby all dressed up real cute in a Santa outfit Awww!

Gift Exchange was really great this year! Hockey Night in Canada boxers!

Others got funnier gifts

I didn’t think it was possible for Trevor to get even more Christmas-y with his oversized Santa-beard-sweater but he got a Christmas ornament in his gift exchange.

J dressed up as Dirty Santa, I think J why are your pants undone?

Crista made a fabulous Christmas sweater for the party and I just had to feature the awesome little Christmas lights strings on it.

It was a great party and a nice way to wish everyone Merry Christmas before everyone gets lost in the holiday craziness. I’m looking forward to the Double-Work-Christmas-Party this Friday, and then Christmas with the family. And lots of snowboarding!