A Magical Moroccan Dinner Party

Thankyou all for your sweet comments, tweets and general warm wishes for my 30th birthday. I must say, I have had the most wonderful couple of days - and was fortunate enough to have birthday celebrations that were beyond even my wildest expectations.

Friends and family - coming together for great food and lots of laughs. Could a birthday celebration be anymore perfect?! And, to say that I was spoilt, would be an understatement. I was truly blown away by the generosity of my nearest and dearest, and I really am so very blessed (but more on that to come tomorrow).

Ok enough mushy sentiment, let me share with you the highlight of my weekend.

My Magical Moroccan Dinner Party.

Taking advantage of the large living area in our new house, I decided to hold a dinner party for 40 people. We hired chairs, tables and cutlery, and with the help of cheap fabrics, candles and vases, we transformed our living room from this....

To this!

I am not really sure how I came up with the Moroccan theme for the party. All I know is that I wanted something elegant, yet festive and filled with flavour.

I am pretty certain we delivered - thanks to the wonderful efforts of my family and best friend who worked with me all of Saturday morning and afternoon to decorate the house and prepare the food!

I chose orange, red and purple as the main colours for the party, using orange hessian as the table cloths...

with strips of patterned material for the table runners.

In the centre of each table we placed a large vase filled with these gorgeous red flowers and some greenery.

At each place setting was a little trivia card about Morocco - which I am told were quite the conversation starters amongst our guests.

We placed our couches outside (under a large heater that we had hired), providing a little 'break out' space.

And lined the entry hallway with luminaries.

But it wasn't just about the decorations......for what dinner party is complete without food. Glorious food.

Our wonderful local Turkish restaurant provided the entrees:

 

A selection of dips / Turkish bread, and stuffed vine leaves (and some warm zucchini balls that went un-pictured as they were gobbled up so quickly!) Served communally on large platters.

While the main menu was made up of a variety of slow cooked Moroccan tagines and meatballs...

Some of which I have shared on the blog before (here and here) during our trial runs.

Sadly I realised my 'photographer' (aka my brother's gorgeous girlfriend) didn’t really take any photos of the actual dishes. But trust me when I say that there was plenty of food at the start, and not too much at the end, so they can't have been too bad lol.

We served the dishes buffet style, and our guests were able to come and help themselves.

 

And the feedback was all positive, with the lamb and date tagine emerging as the clear winner!

But now....onto dessert :)

Or a dessert buffet if you will! I used my DIY art technique to make the colourful 'back boards' for the buffet, and we were loaned some red lamps that gave the table a real Moroccan feel.

But the star of the evening was a glorious macaron tower...

filled with a variety of macarons supplied by our local French Patisserie.

As well as freshly made baklava from the local Turkish restaurant.

ok ok -  not so Moroccan but tasty nonetheless!

It really was one of those nights that disappeared in the blink of an eye.

It felt like I had only just said 'hello' to my friends and family, when midnight rolled around and the crowd began to dissipate.  The night turned out even better than I had hoped, and created so many wonderful “new” memories…

While also having the chance to reminisce about some “old” memories :) 

A wonderful night indeed!