you know that Simon and Garfunkel song?

Bookends.

I know! I know!

More nostalgia.

geesh.

I cannot help myself.

I picked up the phone and called an old friend.

I called his parents, actually, and VIOLA!

He called me back.

I feel so much less like the unibomber now.

Cool.

I have to do a big birthday shindig for my mother in law's birthday on Saturday.

I am going with a "Mediterranean" theme, I am thinking "Lebanon meets Greece, by way of South Carolina.

She requested MEAT.

and since I am pretty cheap, yet picky, I found some beautiful center cut pork chops, that I am making into the kebabs.


Blasphemous, I know.

I will also make a full array of fine veggie dishes, including humus, baba ganoush, steamed mix veggies, and a cabbage salad, olives, feta cheese, you get the picture.

I am moving my buffet to the other side of the dinning room, bringing up the "auxiliary table" from the basement, placing it end to end with the dining table, to create one long table, kids included. I am topping it with white cotton cloth, that goes all the way to the floor, to both hide the two table solutions, and create drama and elegance. I have a big pottery bowl filled with pansy plants for a center piece, and I will have two tall burnt Orange tapers on either side, then flank them with two smaller pottery bowls of pansies, and more tapers down the long table. I will have a little votive at each place setting and a grosgrain ribbon as a napkin ring/name marker. Orange linen napkins, with yellow ribbon, cobalt plates, and Mexican cobalt wine glasses, simple tumblers for water & kid drinks.

Whew, I think I have a PLAN!!!

Mark's sis is bringing desert.