How to Dress Up Your Dinners

Although summer is coming to an end there is still plenty of time to host some great dinner parties with the girls. One of the tricks to a successful dinner get together is not only the delicious food, but how it is presented. You don't have to be a top notch chef to make a dish look like it's from a four star restaurant. Here are some plating tips from Startcooking.com

Set the table properly. Your day-to-day meals might be free-for-alls, but if you’ve got guests coming over, it’s nice to have the knives and forks in the right places.

Choose your plates wisely. Make sure your serving plates are big enough to let each food item stand out, but small enough that the portions don’t look tiny.

Read the clock! A foolproof way to arrange food on a plate is to place the carbohydrate (rice, pasta, bread, etc.) at “11 o’clock,” the protein at “2 o’clock,” and the vegetables at “6 o’clock” from the diner’s point of view. 

Be odd. Don’t be strange, but things generally look more interesting when they’re in sets of odd numbers, rather than even numbers.

Play with Height. This Chicken Stirfry with Broccoli looks more interesting because of the high mound of rice sitting next to it.  

Play with color and texture. Even if you’re serving something like fish sticks a rainbow of mixed vegetables on the side can make the dish look like a million bucks.

Garnish appropriately. Don’t lose sight of the recipe you made in the first place! Any garnishes on the plate should be edible and should enhance the flavor of the main dishes.

Read the entire article here!

To celebrate or not to celebrate, that's the question.

So my son just turned one in March and there was a huge debate as to if I was going to throw him his first birthday party. Considering my family is in NY and all of my friends are grown ups it seemed that there was no debate that we would have a small party of just my son, my boyfriend and I. Although we bought Leito some toys and clothes for his birthday, they still seemed slightly un-birthday like since he was with us while they were purchased.

So my question is: are first birthdays for the baby or for the mother?

I definitely believe that they are more so for us than for them. We had to carry them around for 10 months and then we had to raise them for one year. It is an amazing accomplishment that even though the babies will never remember we will.

I asked a few mothers their thoughts regarding hosting a first birthday party and had many different answers. Some moms said they will not have a party, some moms said they will have a party and will invite the neighborhood babies, some said they will have a party but just with family members. I will admit, if I had some friends with babies I would've thrown him a small party as well but you take what you can get right?

What would/have you done? Did you throw a party or was the baby THE party?