Our monthly dinners are generally the first Monday of every month, but this month, I fell ill and then had surgery scheduled for the following week, so I thought we might have to cancel. It has been 18+ years of never missing a month, so this devastated me. Luckily, I felt well enough to host, so we had a belated dinner. To have a little fun with this lateness, I decided to theme the dinner around it with a Better Late Than Never party.
Invitation: I designed the invitations with clipart images of various styles of clocks. I added a few time-related words in the wording as well.
The Wonder Woman clock (my teenage daughter's) was a fun addition. I love the variety and colors in the clocks that I used.
Thank you to all my neighbors to loaned me clocks for the evening.
I used a variety of wristwatches for napkin rings. Some were heavy and flattened the rolled napkin, so I used some wooden pieces inside the napkin to prop them up.
I am a teacher, so one of the first things I thought about when I came up with this theme, was tardy passes. I decided to use this idea as my place card. I had a lot of fun coming up with short reasons for guest's to be late, matching the reason with each guest's personality, hobbies, etc.
I used the tardy slip (or sip in this case) idea in designing my white wine label as well. Chardon-Me, I'm Late instead of pardon me for the chardonnay bottle. Never RED-y on Time for the red wine.
For wine charms, I cut out some of the images of clocks from the invitation as well as others I found online making sure I had a variety of types of clocks.
I also added a clock image to the display on my mantle.
Menu: Due to my surgery, I needed to come up with a menu that I could handle in my short spurts of energy. One of my guests also offered to cover the appetizer, so she brought all the ingredients and quickly assembled them upon arrival. Decided to call these Procrasti-nachos to go with the theme. Delicious.
Baked veggies were the side dish for the party. One of my guests came early to help with sliceing and preparing the vegetables. We used zucchini, red, yellow, and orange peppers, and mushrooms. I went with alliteration in naming this dish - Very Late Veggies.
I also used frozen rolls for ease. Just baked these with butter. Titled these ROLL-in In Late.
I also used frozen rolls for ease. Just baked these with butter. Titled these ROLL-in In Late.
Favor: I wanted to keep the parting gift simple, so I purchased packs of Now and Laters from Walgreens. I designed a tag that read, "Thanks for coming NOW...even though the party's a bit LATER than expected."
I am happy that I was able to host this gathering and not miss a month's dinner even through life's health challenges. Grateful to have such amazing friends that helped out as well. It was a fun theme, great food, and of course outstanding company!