Hostess With The Mostess

After our honeymoon to Italy including a cooking school in Tuscany, we threw a Tuscan dinner party for our friends who were instrumental in helping us with our wedding.

We wanted it to be nice, but also keep costs down.  So, while I spent money by renting the table, chivarri chairs & linens, I DIY'd everything else.  And, since we just returned from a cooking school, of course it was us who cooked dinner.

Rather than buying expensive charger plates, I found dark cork board at Michael's and used them as a charger/placemat.  It gave it a nice earthy/Tuscan feel.  I bought wheatgrass pallets at the local health food store and placed typical cylindrical vases wrapped with spaghetti and a ribbon in the center of the wheatgrass.  The vases held candles that glowed nicely through the spaghetti at night.

I saved old wine bottles and cleaned them out to use as individual water bottles for each guest.  We picked rosemary out of our yard and inserted a sprig of rosemary along with a breadstick into a ribbon wrapped napkin.  I printed each person's name on cream colored paper and inserted the names into cork we had saved as place cards.  I painted votive candle holders with a bronze and gold paint, then dipped them in dried herbs.  When the candles were lit, you could slightly smell the italian herbs.  As a gift to each guest, we printed recipes we learned at our cooking school onto vellum and attached each recipe to a wine themed coaster with a wine charm and placed a wine bottle stopper next to the recipe card.