Old Update of My Birthday

This year for my birthday I just had a dinner with my immediate family (without kids hehehe)

I decided I wanted to enjoy some delicious food and have all the kids babysat so that we could enjoy our meal! However, our babysitters fell through so we had our girls there, but we just kept them up all day then put them to bed early in time for we adults to have dinner :) - mean aren't we!

Russ and I get carried away when it comes to hosting sometimes. We decided to do a little 'My Kitchen Rules' style, but without the judging!!!

We had pre-dinner drinks outside under our gazebo with little solar and fairy lights everywhere, then we had entree, main and dessert.

We gutted out our living room and turned it into a "fine-dining" atmosphere and had decorations and everything! We had the time of our lives organising this, and we also LOVED serving our family a beautiful meal (if I may say so myself) without the expense of going to a restaurant.

Entree was Marinated Prawns with a green Thai salad
Main was Beef Eye Fillet (served Medium Rare) on creamy mash with beans
Dessert was a choice of (my personal favourite) Baked Banana Caramel Cheesecake with warm Caramel Sauce OR Mississippi Mud Cake with fresh cream (boy was it Muddy!!)

It was a wonderful night and I had an absolute blast! It actually made me think we should do something like this once a month where you can put out an open invite - the first 10 to respond, get to come along to our place...pay $30 for a 3 course meal and meet people you've never met before and have an enjoyable night!! It's an idea anyway (like Jamie Oliver did in NY)

We called our 'home restaurant' Autumn Skies and we had little menu's for everyone, along with suggested wines for different courses and guests were told to come in Cocktail attire

Here are a few pics from the evening:

A bit blurry, but it's our transformed lounge room

Entree

Unfortunately we were having so much fun, we forgot to snap the other courses

Table decorations. Fish bowls filled with Autumn Leaves surrounded by candles

Group shot!!

Was pretty dark in there!

Obligatory shot at the end of the night of ourselves :)