Woman in Real Life

With all of the planning, shopping, decorating and baking going on in the weeks leading up to Christmas, I don't know about you, but I often forget to even think about New Year's Eve. My thanks to Dannyelle of Life is a Party for forcing me (haha) to think about New Year's by making it the theme for our final Year of Feasting post of 2017.

A group of us did Year of Feasting posts for each season this year. Here are my spring, summer (Canada Day), and fall (Thanksgiving) blog posts. For my New Year's party, I chose a black and gold colour scheme, with a food theme of chocolate. Because chocolate. This theme assumes that people eat dinner before they come to your party. Or maybe not. Maybe they just gorge on chocolate. That would be okay for one night, no? Be sure to read to the bottom of this post to visit the other Year of Feasting bloggers' parties.


Several years back, my husband and I planned a chocolate themed party to celebrate (and, let's be honest, show off) our new hardwood flooring. But when the installers lifted the old tile, they found water damage in the floorboards underneath. We dealt with that and never did have our chocolate party. So it's time!

Our Year of Feasting blog posts this month are sponsored by Amara, sellers of gorgeous, show-stopping accessories and home goods for all rooms in your house. For my New Year's Eve black and gold table, I chose this beautiful black and white ceramic cake stand. Over on the far right of my table, above, you can also see this lovely smoke grey tealight candle holder.

I also crafted a few party decor items using my Cricut Explore Air™, like this "Kiss Me" cake topper in gold glitter cardstock (which I might be a bit obsessed with). I simply searched the available images in Cricut Design Space and found "Kiss Me" already written up in this font and format. All I had to do was send it to the machine for cutting and glue the topper onto a skewer (spray painted gold). It was a fitting New Year's Eve themed cake topper for this vegan chocolate cake with "buttercream" icing and broken chocolate sandwich cookies.


I already had this gold marbled paper table runner from Afloral, and then I spotted the pretty marbled gold Gunnison porcelain side plate at Amara. Clearly a match made in heaven. The plate is the perfect size for a delicious little vegan chocolate cheesecake from Daiya, which I topped with chocolate chips.



I also adore this matte black candlestick from Amara, above. It has such a lovely shape. As luck would have it, I had purchased a few black ornaments on clearance after last Christmas, as well as a couple of pretty gold garlands. They worked out well with my black and gold theme.