Summer Deck Party 2011

Ready to Serve!

As part of my company's annual auction to raise money for United Way of King County, my department offers for bid tickets to a summer deck party at my boss's beautiful home on Bainbridge Island. For $50 employees can buy tickets to the event, which includes appetizers, a multi-course dinner, drinks and entertainment for the evening. To make all of this happen for our 30 guests, my team and I awoke bright and early on Saturday morning to catch the 7:55 ferry to the island.

Very excited that I was allowed
to cook some things this year...

Each year's party has a theme, and this year we did an Italian pizza party so we could utilize my boss's brand new wood fire pizza oven and outdoor kitchen. Guests are waited on hand and foot while they enjoy the gorgeous outdoor venue which overlooks stunning Hidden Cove. All of the food and beverages are hand made from scratch by our team. Unfortunately, by the time guests began arriving at 3 p.m. we were pretty exhausted because we had been cleaning, decorating, chopping and cooking for six hours straight. Then came six more hours of serving the guests. Each home made course was prepared with delicious fresh ingredients and served to the guests while they sat on the deck enjoying drinks including Italian beers, wines and one of my personal favorites, Bellinis.


View of the gorgeous deck before the guests arrived.

 

Guests are always greeted with jell-o shots at our parties.



Antipasto - the traditional first course of a formal Italian meal.

Appetizers included caprese skewers and fried mozzarella balls...

Roasted asparagus wrapped in prosciutto...

And bruschetta.

Bread Salad.

Pasta Salad.

All the fixin's, ready to hit the dough and head for the oven!

Italian meats and cheeses pizza ready for the oven.

Ready to serve - YUM!

Although it can be an extremely long, hard day, it was really fun to spend the time with my team outside of the office, and the guests really enjoyed the party. Stewart volunteered to give up ANOTHER one of his days off to help, so he's really put in his time for my work events so far this year.

I've been fairly stressed out for a few weeks now trying to coordinate and plan this event, so I'm super relieved that it's finally over and that everyone enjoyed themselves.