An Evening in the Garden
So as you saw by my post yesterday, the evening went very well. Everyone had a wonderful time and we over bought on the booze so I got to take a bunch home. 
The event was titled, An Evening in the Garden and it was held at the Morris Arboretum. Please check out the site sometime. It is a beautiful place. It was essentially a little gathering for my bosses, financial advisors, to thank their clients for their business and to get new business by clients bringing guests. Got it? The theme was also about going green (of course) and so I tried to be as green as possible with the preparations; no plastic glasses, no paper plates, recycled materials for decorations and takeaways. There were garden tours and guests could wander in the gardens when they wished. We had the whole place to ourselves.
Ok, here’s the scoop on the pics you see in the slide show. You either have to click or double click to see the show with the captions. The centerpieces I made with mason jars, kraft paper, blue raffia and 150 zinnias I cut myself the morning of the event. The pic I took of the centerpiece at the event didn’t do it justice but I had a lot to do. I took a pic of the bar area so I could mention that we had a special signature drink, it was a hibiscus tea mojito. It was kinda the color of the flowers and it was SO good! We had regular mojitos as well. They used cut sugarcane as stirrers for each drink. We also had an open bar. The food was FABULOUS too. We had a large antipasto table with olives, cheeses, tapanade, sardines (I think P was the only person that ate those). We also had butlered HDO’s, spiced scallop on a rice cracker, flat iron steak with chipotle butter on a baguette slice, veggie spring rolls and shrimp.
The takeaway bags had directions on how to sign up for paperless account information and also had a fax back to us for people that are interested in doing a fall clean-up in Fairmount Park (Philly’s Central Park but ours is bigger). There was also a retirement planning book that is actually kinda fun to use and a potted herb; Sage, Rosemary, Thyme or Lavender.
All in all we had a little over 100 people at the event. It went VERY well and everyone had a great time. As soon as I got there and saw that my wonderful caterers had everything under control, I relaxed a bit and was able to enjoy myself at the actual event even though I was still doing the work thing. So, enjoy the few pics I thought to get.