Successful St. Patricks Day

After some stressing and a delayed dinner, we finally got everything started and people began showing up. Michael made corned beef three different ways and it was all delicious. Of course you gotta have cabbage and potatoes to complete the Irish meal, and I also insisted on carrots because I just really love cooked carrots. There was a lot of food. Way more than I think we'd planned. Most of the beef was eaten but sadly we had to throw some of the veggies out at the end of the night. I also have a sneaking suspicion that someone took my tupperware container of carrots and potatoes I'd put in the fridge, since it's now nowhere to be seen.

There was some really tasty sweet stuff to go with the savory meal. We called this an Irish milkshake, or Bailey's milkshake, as it's made with Bailey's (coffee flavored), ice cream, milk and chocolate syrup. We had two big pitchers of it and it went fast. Nom.

A couple was nice enough to bring us some cupcakes made with Guinness and Bailey's; there's still some left but I actually didn't get around to trying one. There was also banana pudding, squared off by yummy square cookies. Apparently you can really taste the alcohol in the frosting, and those shapes on top are crunchy candies!

Someone brought PBR, which I haven't seen since I left Arizona. I don't drink the stuff but it really made me miss home. Once we got a good crowd it definitely started getting rambunctious and loud. We taught everyone Thumper, a game I personally learned from Emily, and we had so much alcohol and people kept bringing more! There's definitely leftovers.

The guys got a bonfire going which made me happy. I love the smell and I love when everyone stands around it drinking. Yet another thing that made me think of home. Everyone was really responsible about it and someone was always watching it, although it's wetter here than Arizona and I wasn't all that worried about anything catching fire.

She couldn't finish it.

The jello shots we made turned out to be pretty strong, but overall successful. I tried to push them and got rid of a lot but there's a lot leftover of those, too. I guess we'd have to have another party to get rid of all the stuff we have left! It's crazy. But for my first time making jello shots I was pretty proud of them. Of course, it was also really simple.

Somebody brought "Wrecked," or the equivalent of Battleships with shots. People were entertained just watching and cheering. I couldn't bring myself to play--I felt like I needed to stay relatively alert since I was a host.

And of course King's Cup came up. We had this problem, though; everyone got really distracted part way through every game we played and nobody could finish a full game of anything. Smoke breaks, the bonfire, a different game...people just wandered off in the middle of things. It was funny, really.

We got really good feedback from the party. Everyone seemed to really enjoy it. The cleanup hasn't been that bad; Michael and I started last night and even after taking a break for a long breakfast at Cracker Barrel (a tradition after a night of drinking) I kept cleaning and it's nearly done. But we just have so much stuff leftover! I don't know what to do. Today I mostly just want to clean, drink lots of water and play video games with my husband.

But I'm so glad our first big party at our own place went well! :)

*As an edited side note, I started this entry at the very end of the night and didn't edit it much the next day. I've had to read it a few times to catch the fact that I kept saying "definitely" and "leftovers." Hopefully after some slight rewording it doesn't sound nearly as retarded as I thought it did.