Fancy Schmancy

Enrichment tonight was pretty cool. They had 3 different classes on entertaining/hosting a party. It was quite fun. One of the ladies is all about presentation. She goes overboard quite a bit but it was interesting to see her ideas. EVERY table she does is a full blown deal. I thought my aunt Chacha went all out but she doesn't even hold a candle to this lady. It was pretty crazy. We then had my friend Shireen show us some favorite party foods. YUMMY!! She said the best nofail stuff was using puff pastry from the freezer dept. in the grocery store. She had several things with that. My favorite was the Petis Pains Au Chcolat 2 sheets frozen puff pastry, thawed and each sheet cut into 12 squares 1 large egg beaten to blend with 1 t. water for glaze 4 3.5 oz. bars bittersweet or milk chocolate cut into siz 2x 3/4 inch pieces Sugar Line baking sheet with parchment paper. Brush top of each puff pastry square with egg glaze. Place 1 chocolate piece on edge of pastry square. Roll up dough tightly enclosing chocolate. Repeat with remaining pastry and chocolate. Place rolls on baking sheet, semi side down. Can be made ahead and refrigerated. Preheat oven to 400. Brush tops of pastry rolls with egg glaze and sprinkle lightly with sugar. "Bake until pastries are golden brown about 15 mins. Serve warm or at room temp. Also good with tsp. of raspberry jam added to chocolate. These taste like the chocolate croissants we had in Spain. They are sooo yummy!! We also had a professional party planner talk to us about etiquette. It was fun Betsy (the party planner and our primary chorister) is hystarical and made it a lot of fun. My favorite thing from the evening was when Shireen said "There are soooo many fun things to try. Desserts especially. List all the ones you might want to do and everytime you make dessert for your family try something new. My problem is I think to myself, '52 weeks in a year and if I make dessert once a week that 52 new things I can make' My problem is I make dessert way more than once a week." oohhhh to have that lugsery. It's hard to go to these things in the light that these people spend literally fortunes on everything they do, and they don't realize it. The lady that did the decorating was saying "Oh you just take the cheap roses from Costco ($13 at least) and put them in a little vase you around the house, make sure you put 'oasis' in there (foam, $3) and surrround it with moss ($5). Add candles little tealight or votives are a must (~$3) and add... she went on and on and she said it's not expensive at all and you have a wonderfully set table. In my mind I was thinking, "Ok that's shoes for Spencer, who needs new ones, a coat for me, I left mine on the plane.... food for the table that's in another form than pasta or chicken nuggets." It was hard to listen to because she was so out of touch with at least half of the poor students that were there in the audience. Oh well. She did a good job otherwise. I guess I was just frustrated that there's no possible way I can have fun with that stuff, even when I will have money I think or at least hope I'll be a little bit more conservative with the money.