We recently remodeled our backyard (or almost) and it looked so nice I decided it would be fun to have a garden party.  Often my ideas are bigger and more complicated than I can execute, especially when we weren’t done with the sprinklers or clean up. I scheduled the party early May, and had to reschedule it, making it very confusing for all my friends. The actual day of the party the weather was beautiful–perfect, sunny yet cool weather that San Diego often lacks in May (typically, we have what’s called “May gray,” when the marine layer sits over the beach for most of the month) so we were lucky. And it was wonderful fun!

The theme was “bohemian garden”, something I made up and wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but I got to use a lot of my odds and ends from inside the house and cook a lot of eggplant dishes. I made lemon squares and honey cupcakes with honey buttercream frosting from the recipe on the Romancing the Bee blog–really yummy!

Oh yes, we had a drink called Le Romantique, which is a champagne cocktail served at one of our local restaurants. My husband bartended (thank you for being the lone man! Apparently, we were really loud and scared the dog into hiding inside or maybe he didn’t think eggplant caviar was worth begging for).  Anyway, we made our own version of Le Romantique with rose water, raspberry vodka, pomegranate juice, simple syrup, champagne and real edible rose petals my sister brought me from England. The rose petals looked so good in the drink that had a friendly visitor drop in for a drink (see slideshow below).

Everyone visited the chickens and the new chicken coop and took photos in my hanging photo frame. You can see it hanging here in the tree next to the paper decorations I made.

Here are more pictures. I hope everyone had as much fun as I did! Thank you all for coming!

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