i had a lovely time last night.  as you know from the last post, we asked everyone to come to the event with a word in mind.  If I had to choose a word for last night, my word would be “sated.”  From the richness of the desserts to the richness of the beautiful words and their accompanying explanations, I went to bed feeling full.  up to the brim.  sated.  here are a few photos for you to enjoy.

first, the desserts:

my friends who were planning the party had generously stopped at my favorite bakery in town and purchased the yummy fruit tarts and jam cookies you see in the foreground, then a quick trip to Trader Joe’s landed the apricot almond tart and the “chocolate pringles.”  The layer cake?  well…… i got a hankering to make a fancy cake.  ever since I read the book Eat Cake by Jeanne Ray I’d been wanting to make a really yummy, decadent cake.  But there’s not often enough people around to justify baking a giant cake, so…. I’d put it on the bottom of my ever-growing “could do” list.  But yesterday was the day.  I’d been brainstorming myself through my baking mood (geez, this cake needs its own blog post, doesn’t it?  bear with me….) and had a flash of inspiration–chocolate cake + pumpkin cake + cream cheese frosting = amaaaaaaazing.  And so I baked two round pumpkin cakes the night before, two chocolate cakes that morning, then right before the party, i whipped up a big (but apparently not big enough!  Look at those crumbs peeking through!) batch of cream cheese frosting.

apparently, my naughty kitty thought that the frosting was amazing too.  oh well, we’re all good friends (and many are cat owners) so we all had a good laugh and cut that part off of the cake before slicing into it.

oh. my. goodness.  moist, delicious, and stripes too?  yum.

but enough about the cake (I was just so excited that it turned out!  it’s not like I can really practice making a cake like that!).  The really fantastic part of this event was the friends, and the words, so here are a few photos of some of the pendants and their beautiful words:

(in this shot you can also see a few of the many beautiful candles that were set up all over the room)

here are all of the pendants, ready to be baked.  aren’t they beautiful?

the words that everyone chose were so beautiful.  In the invitations that went out, I consciously chose not to include “example” words because I didn’t want to influence their choice and everyone totally amazed me with the variety of words that they chose.  There were no duplicates (which wouldn’t have been a big deal if there had–who couldn’t use an extra helping of peace or hope?) and everyone had such lovely words to say around their chosen word.  they also wrote out these explanations on cards that were included in this lovely album (and a framed poem that they all signed) which i can read whenever i need to hear those words again and which i can also add to over time.

all told, it was exactly what i’d hoped it would be–no, it was actually way better than i’d ever hoped it could be and i thank all of you (including those of you from afar who have already sent me more words to add to my book!) for this incredible gift of friendship, love, and support.