Dream of Californication

Back in November or December of last year, a friend of ours had the brilliant idea of doing an "apartment hop" and calling it Winterfest. The concept is pretty much one of a bar hop, only using our apartments instead of bars since we all live in the same complex and relatively close to each other (there are three of us on the same street if that gives you an idea of how close we are). Each home got to host their own mini party and attach a theme to it; i.e. a summer themed home could have snacks you eat during the summer, summery decorations, summer drinks, music, etc.

This finally happened this past weekend and it was a BLAST. Any time with our TACP family is a good one, but this was exceptional. Imagine guys snowshoeing from house to house, people climbing up mountains of snow to get to the next house being with great difficulty due to being waist deep in snow, and my husband doing all of this in shorts. 

Why was he in shorts, you ask? Because our theme was CALIFORNIA! Of course. We were the second house and he had the smart idea to not change before going to all the other houses. This resulted in severe comedy and very, very red shins for him. We had so much fun decorating our house, though. It was my idea to do the CA theme and most of the decoration work came from James. Weeks went into this, and even more thought. Truthfully, we wanted to do much more than we did. We're talking about having celebrity cut out's of Charlie Sheen and our dear Governator, making Hollywood stars to go down on the kitchen floor, and figuring out how to have In N Out for our food. That would've cost way too much money, though, so we ex'd those out and stuck with simpler things.

Obviously, the pot plants were for comedy. Everyone thinks of marijuana when they hear California, so it had to be done. They were a hit, too, and made their way into a few pictures. The palm trees were actually mostly free(!), as a local carpet company donated one of the big cardboard rolls that comes in the center of a roll of carpet. For food, we did chips and guacamole because, hello, just add an avocado to something and it becomes Californian. We also had crackers and cheese because Napa Valley is so well known, so we figured having wine type of snacks would be appropriate, too. And to accompany all of these perfect decorations was a slideshow of pictures of California and a whole California playlist. Think Beach Boys, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Katy Perry. 

It was pure California bliss in the middle of bliss-less New York. Summer in the middle of winter (because CA has no winter…haha). And our California flag is still hanging up about the tv. That probably won't come down for a while.

Also, I guess this is kind of a mini house tour? Now that our house is clean, I can and WILL do a full dining/living room tour soon. Once all of the decorations are down, anyway.