New Years Open House!

Vision of Southern Food

Like many, Hubby and I both have been commiserating about this past year...we should have realized that we weren't off to a good start when we came home from spending last years New Years Eve at the symphony (which was very nice, I might add) only to arrive home after midnight to a huge flood in the basement. It appeared the toilet in our bathroom, which is on the second level of the house was leaking! What made matters worse, was that it was not even our basement but the basement of my in-laws! I tried to convince Hubby that he needed to tell his parents immediately about the situation and that there was no way that he could ever cover it up without them knowing! But I suppose childhood memories of spilling his milk, breaking their lawnmower, wrecking their car etc.etc...kicked in! So in order to kick off our new year this year, I've decide to have a small impromptu New Years Day open house and I just decided to do this last week. I'm just now writing out my menu and it's definitely going to be, you've guessed it... Southern Style!

Ham
Black Eyed peas - Lord knows, we all need the good luck! I may try this one from Paula (click here)
Collard Greens - I love collard greens and my first attempt to make them was last year while Hubby was trying to clean up the flood mess! This year, I'm going to try Virginia Willis's recipe author of Bon Appetit Y'All which Santa forgot to give me!

Potato dish of some sort?- Because the picky hubby does not do black eye peas nor collard greens!
Roasted Shrimp - From Back to Basics from Ina - for all my vegetarian friends.
Dip - Ina's sun-dried or spinach dip?
Dessert - Chocolate Chip Cake - Sylvia, our volunteer here at the museum just dropped by all the ingredients for her world famous Chocolate Chip Cake for hubby to make! She is so sweet, and she is definitely getting an invite! So that problem is solved. I would like to do monogrammed sugar cookies, but that's looking a little iffy about now!
Gift bags - Small bottles of champagne, chocolate gold coins, and it looks like I need to hurry up and come up with a few other things...Hmmmm!

Decor - Yellow roses a must!

Well this is about as far as I've gotten on my menu which is two days away. If you have any suggestions by all means...please let me know!

As far as New Years eve is concerned, Hubby and I may go to the symphony again, but the nice thing is if we arrive home to a flood it will not be at my in laws ...Yea!