entertained: a fabulous fall drinkfest

I collaborated with Jen this weekend to help her throw a killer cocktail party. She is another gal, formerly from the South, who loves to entertain and is an amazing artist, check out her website! She wanted to do something with a fall theme and decided this shindig was to be a fun fall Drinkfest! Oh yeah, we love to party. I started off gathering a little inspiration


to get our brains a' stormin' and we also had to do a little space planning because this is New York City and most of us live in freakishly small apartments. Here is what Casa Clown Car looks like...


Yeah, um, its TINY! So we decided to keep the hors d'oeuvres in the kitchen, 1. because that was easy and 2. because it had the most horizontal surfaces... I know that food in the kitchen isn't really, ummm, that innovative but what is cool is how we kept the guests from bottle necking in the kitchen. We put the bar in the bedroom!

Which is on the other side of the apartment. We also moved the furniture to create a big open space for gathering and a few groupings of seating for conversations when your feet start hurting from your fab heels. That afternoon we went to pick up some flowers for me to make a few simple arrangements

(don't you just love the tiara in the background? It makes an appearance for all the parties)

As for the menu, we made these delicious apple spiced muffins with walnuts and cream cheese frosting (like the ones I mentioned here) and some seriously delicious butternut squash soup "shots"

and salmon topped with caviar on baguette with sea salt and honey, sour cream rolls (aka: crack rolls, aka: fatten you right up rolls), an awesome cheese plate (we got the cheese at Murray's which is a stinky lil slice o' heaven right in the West Village) and last but not least we had some delicious fig and ricotta treats from none other than Shanna of Daughter Sharp Cookies!
oh, and did I mention that we just HAD to taste test all the cocktails a few days before we could officially commit!?!? (we take this stuff seriously, folks) We decided to go with Bourbon & Cider punch, Champagne Pomegranate Cocktails and Blood Orange Screwdrivers.

And so folks, it looks like we had done a pretty good job of fixing ourselves up a swanky affair. And it was a blast! Thanks Jen (and Joe, her other half) for the fun times!!!! You guys rock!
xo Lea