I am going to be honest,  I have been a bad bad blogger this last year.   I have been  meaning to blog more and ended up not blogging at all!!  I wanted to take this opportunity to apologize to all of our readers and I am going to try to be a better blogger!!

With that being said, I believe the last I left off with everyone I was moving in with my boyfriend. The move went well and we are so happy with our apartment and living with each other.  We recently ran into a little problem with flooding after Irene and had to be rescued by boat from our house because the flooding got so bad!  After the rescue, we were displaced for almost 3 weeks, waiting for plumbing and electricity to be fixed!  Thank god my boyfriend’s parents live in the area and took us in for the whole time, as well as our apartment not getting affected because we live on the second floor. Below is a view from our window of the river waters coming in.  It was crazy and we hope that it was a once and a lifetime experience! (Also you may be confused about a house being in New York City,  but I moved to the New Jersey suburbs when I moved in with my boyfriend.   Don’t worry, I am still in the city everyday to go to work.)

When we got back into our house we decided to throw a party as sort of the House Warming Party We Never Had/ We Survived Irene Party.  I really got into the theme and had the food, drinks, music, and decorations themed around Hurricanes and boat rescues.  You are probably wondering what this entails, don’t worry I won’t leave you hanging.

Lets start with the drinks,  I served pitchers of hurricanes, which I found a recipe for on Food Network’s website by the Neely’s.  I garnished these drinks with pineapples, maraschino cherries, and umbrellas.   We also served beers, which we had on ice in a giant blow up duck.  (Isn’t he cute, he even quacks!)  I also had blue jello shots with Swedish fish floating in them.

For food I made a bunch of appetizer and snacks that went with the theme like rye “boat” dip, pinwheels (which looked like tornadoes), and white trash.   In bowls around the party I had goldfish crackers, life savors, gummy worms, and Swedish fish.  I made a few other things that were not really themed but easy to put together.  I kept the appetizers pretty simple because I had just gotten back into my apartment and wanted to keep things easy on myself.

Where I let my creativity shine was in my party favor which were cut out cookies in the shapes of sailboats and umbrellas, which I bagged in clear cookie bags and gave to everyone as they left.   While I was “displaced” from my apartment I started reading blogs my mom had introduced me to. One of the blogs that I have fell in love with and have started to read daily (and just about cook from daily!) is Annie’s Eat.  My mom and I are seriously obsessed with this blog.  Annie makes these great cut-out cookies and decorates them so beautifully with royal icing.   She gives a whole tutorial on her blog on how to decorate cut out sugar cookies with royal icing.  I took my first attempt using royal icing, which I intend to practice so don’t judge me yet!

My boyfriend was in charge of the music, which he did an awesome job on.  Every song was themed to storms, rain, hurricanes, and of course boats. We had lifeguard floating devices and goggles which made for really great and funny pictures from our guest.  In all the party was really fun and helped me and my boyfriend recover from the dramatic month.  Enjoy!

-Sister K