My brother and Sister in law were here visiting in the fall, so while they were here I hosted another Birthday dinner party for my Sister in law.  I wanted to use the yellow botanical napkin rings that I got last year at Target from Hearth and Hand, so I decided to go with a yellow botanical theme.  I have been wanting to try this vellum eucalyptus tutorial so I thought it was the perfect time to use them.  I love how they turned out.  It was the perfect way to use my favorite botanical in the color scheme I was going for.  After that I pulled out a bunch of my faux yellow botanicals (which are mostly from Hearth and Hand…. ) to create a garland along the center of the table.  I added in some birchwood rounds and candles, a natural wood bead garland and my yellow fabric pumpkins from Details 2 Enjoy.  I was originally going to make enough of the eucalyptus to use in the vases and garland, but they took more time than I anticipated so I stopped after I had enough for one on each place setting.  For the menus, I painted some watercolor yellow eucalyptus and scanned them into clip art.  For the name cards I used the same gold vellum I had for the eucalyptus and hand lettered each name and paper clipped them to some white cardstock.

For the food, I started with some classic Bruschetta.  My sister in law loves this, and actually I think it is a favorite with my whole family.  That was the first menu choice I made, knowing how much she loves it, so from there I decided on an Italian theme and pretty much everything on the menu is among my favorite dishes.  I made some homemade lemonade, stuffed shell chicken pasta, rosemary no knead bread, salad and for dessert a choice of either strawberry, rhubarb or strawberry-rhubarb cream cheese tarts.  I discovered the tarts in my first months of quarantine baking last year, and Vu and I both loved them immediately.  My sister in law prefers more non traditional desserts to cake so this was a great option.  And of course as soon as dinner was over I held my nephew for as long as I could!