D and I hosted our very first, honest to goodness dinner party tonight. Not only was it our collective first, but it was my personal (and surely his) first ever. I feel I'm admitting a weakness by announcing that. I should have hosted someone at my home for a real dinner party before tonight. I mean, I'm thirty four years old, for heaven's sake, and I've never made a full meal for anyone before.

Regardless of my past shortcomings, I'm feeling very special right now. I'd been thinking about inviting our moms for dinner for a while. Then my mom called me about two weeks ago and said she was coming to town to have lunch with a friend of hers who lives nearby. She wanted to know if I was interested in shopping with her that day. I quickly agreed as I knew I wouldn't have any Christmas shopping done before then (sure enough, I haven't) and I asked if she wanted to go ahead and spend the night with us and we'd have her and D's mom for dinner. She thought that would be "lovely" so we booked it.

We spent today cleaning, tidying up and hanging pictures around the house (that's why I love parties - it makes you do those things you always talk about doing but never get around to). Both D's mom (who lives in town) and mine (who lives two hours away) arrived about an hour earlier than we'd thought. Why do guests do that? D had told his mom just today that we'd do dinner at five o'clock, yet she was parked in front of our house by 4:15 pm. And my mom was here no more than five minutes later.

Happily everything was cooking by then, but I hadn't showered. So D entertained while I got clean. Shortly thereafter, everything was ready. We served spinach salad, portobello mushrooms, red potatoes and pork loin. We'd made it all before except the pork, so we weren't quite sure how it was supposed to look or if it had cooked long enough. My mom never served pork loin when I was growing up. She said it always turned out dry so she gave up on it. D's mom had made it many times, so as I'm slicing into it, I say to D, then to her, "Does it look pink to you? Is it done? Should it cook more? Can we eat?" Apparently it was good enough, so off to the dinner table we went. We could have cooked it more, but it was still yum - quite moist and flavorful. We will definitely be making it again.

Of course, the mothers were dutifully impressed, with the lovely festive house and the delicious meal. It was really a nice evening and a good time was had by all. I'm ready to do it again! Who wants to come to dinner?

And speaking of the lovely festive house, I took pictures of some of our holiday decorations. I hope they turned out okay. It was really gray and overcast today so I had to use the flash in the middle of the afternoon. I will hopefully post them tomorrow so you too can smile at all the holiday prettiness. But I am doing the shopping with my mom tomorrow, so here's hoping I can get it all done.