Party: When Life Hands You Lemons... Girls' Night- May 2015

Each year, one of the things I most look forward to is the annual girls’ overnight trip to the outlets. This year, we weren’t able to go in December, so we decided to have a spring ladies’ night at my Auntie Ava’s house with our original outlet crew, including myself, my aunt, my mom and my besties, Katie and Marissa.

It was our fifth annual gathering, so we wanted to make it special, especially since we were staying in. The “moms” are always so generous to us each time we’ve gone up north, so us younger ladies decided to take the reins and let them relax.

The past few months have been really tough. My uncle, Owen, passed away in December. Not only was he my godfather, but my aunt lost her husband, Marissa lost her father in law, and my mom lost her brother in law. It seemed only fitting that the theme of our night be “When Life Hands You Lemons…”

For each of the night’s courses, we tied in lemon themed menu items. We had an outdoor cocktail hour with chips and dip, cheese and crackers, and shrimp cocktail (garnished with lemon wedges). Marissa made some delicious and adorable lemon jello shots, and we introduced the moms to Cards Against Humanity.

For dinner, we grilled up some steak tips, and Katie made an amazing orzo salad with sliced almonds, cucumber, onion, and feta. We capped off the meal with some ice cold limoncello shots.

The inevitable gab fest and dance party began with more lemon jello shots and was capped off by some delicious lemon meringue pie ice cream from Blake’s.

Since what happens at girls’ night, stays at girls’ night, I won’t say much else about the festivities. Some additional lemon themed touches included a banner made by Marissa and some homemade lemon sugar scrub that I made for party favors.

Nights like this remind me that as much as we have going on in our lives as wives and mothers, it is so important to carve out time to spend with the important women in our lives. And, for me, these ladies are four of the most important. We even capped off the event with a morning after breakfast at Stubby's--a diamond in the rough.