Official Dinner Parties @ our apartment

1st Official Dinner Party - October 15, 2015

I need to work on my photography skills and I didn't get a picture of the table completely set with candlelight, but here's an idea of what it was like.

We had one other official dinner party, but it was at Pinzeria Restaurant (highly recommend this restaurant in downtown Moscow near Christ the Saviour Cathedral).

It was a lot of preparation, but we enjoyed getting ready to entertain our first official guests in our home for dinner. Marina and two other ladies were our chefs, servers and cleaners, that was AMAZING.... Can they live with us all the time? haha

The ladies made cheese, sausage and crackers look classy with a tiny slice of pepper and some dill as an appetizer before dinner and when it was time, the dining room was revealed and we all took our seats. Our invited guests were Sybren and Ria from the Netherlands, Jung and Susanna from Korea, Victor and Daniela from Romania and Dustin and Keeley from U.S.A. It was a wonderful time with our new attache friends.

Craig just HAD to show everyone his new hats.

Gifts we received from our guests:

From our Romanian friends: wine, Romanian pottery and a little woven mat

From our Dutch friends, some gin, Dutch cookies, an apron and pot holders, cloths and little ceramic Dutch shoes

From our American friends: a leather U.S.Air force note book and Salt-water taffy from their home State of Utah.

From our Korean friends: a bottle of Mulberry wine, a little drawstring satchel, two wooden ducks and the cute little card with masks.

2nd Official dinner party (at home) - April 5, 2016

Shirly and I were movers to get ready for this dinner party! Seriously, we moved so much stuff from her apartment (directly below us)... like Egyptian lamps, candles, tables... it was crazy, but it helped to set the atmosphere.

This is the atmosphere I'm talking about.... I just LOVE this lighting and hope to bring similar ones home with us from Marrakech!

Russia loves flowers... this was a cute basket I came across all ready to go.

The gang: Left to right - Japan, Switzerland, Chile, (us), USA

The menu. I also made some great appeys - yes, you read it correctly, I, KERRY, made them. Mushroom caps, party pinwheels, shrimp salad on a cucumber and on a Parmesan crisp. I also made butternut squash soup - modified from the pumpkin soup our Swedish friend, Liljana served us at their house. It turned out really good. The turkey dinner was good too - that was all Craig and then I had made apple pie and Nanaimo bars for dessert. Yum!

From our American friends

From our Japanese friends - this wall hanging is from an actual Kimono! Love it!

From our Chilean friends - the earrings on top were made by the Attaches sister - beautiful

Can you guess where these are from? Our Swiss friends, of course! Very cool - and delicious!