A Sweet Farewell

Yesterday was a day of goodbyes - I packed up my office and tearfully said goodbye to my colleagues and then Ben and I headed home to get ready for our goodbye party with close friends. We headed to the Safeway a couple minutes from our house to pick up pizza supplies (because Ben's amazing at making homemade, hand-tossed pizza from scratch), desserts, and Gevalia coffee for a pick-me up later in the evening. We all go to bed so early during the week that on the weekends we often start slumping down into the couch by 10 p.m. - coffee often helps pick the party back up and wake up the guests... Pretty sure this makes me sound like a very boring host, but I promise, we're just sleepy!

We celebrated with some bubbly white wine, rosés, home-brewed beer, lots of snacks, a BBQ chicken pizza, and finished the night with Gevalia coffee made with our Bialetti coffee maker and Ghiradelli brownies topped with homemade caramel sauce and ice cream. I thought that the Gevalia paired particularly well with the desserts we served. Bialetti-brewed coffee is always very strong and often can be quite bitter, a bit closer to espresso than drip coffee. Usually when enjoying any coffee in that method, I have to add a ton of milk and sugar to make my coffee palatable and I noticed that the Gevalia remained very smooth and didn't taste burnt or bitter. 

The night was lovely and we were so happy to have spent the time to move all the boxes that were formerly covering the living room floor into the bedroom to host a sparsely decorated party. It will be so hard to leave these good friends (we've known some of them or five years and some for less than one), but we've already scheduled some Portland visits and are encouraging everyone to take the train down to discover our new city! 

I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls Collective and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.