Housewarming Party! - Erin N. Phillips

This past weekend was full of celebrations and we were so excited that one of them was our Housewarming party! After about six months of full-time living and fixing up of our house, we felt we were finally ready to officially share it with all of our friends.

I’m convinced every new home owner should have a housewarming party because it was the best motivator to get us in gear on all the little projects we had planned. I couldn’t be more happy with how everything turned out and how fun the day (and night) was!

Taking a queue from our invitations (purchased here), I went with a little bit of a pineapple theme in some of the food and decor. Outside of that, I let easy recipes rule and pulled out a lot of decorative and serving items we’ve had since using them in our wedding.

Food items included Southwest Ranch Dip Cups with assorted veggies, Bourbon Bacon Chex Mix, Chocolate Chip Cookies, Mini Oreo Cupcakes (thanks Allie for bringing these!), Fruit Skewers, Pecan Cheese Dip shaped like a pineapple and then for dinner later in the night, BBQ and Pizzas!

I also did an easy dessert of Make-Your-Own Fruit Pizzas with Sugar Cookies, Buttercream and Fruit. They were a hit with all ages!

Inside beverages included a “house” red and white wine.

Outside, we made a beverage station with a Pineapple Mint Rum Punch (via Love Food Eat), cucumber water, sodas, lemonade, sparking water and then coolers of beer. I also had cute koozies made (get yours here) to keep everyone’s drinks extra cold!

I’ll have to say though, the drink highlight of the party was most definitely a Brown Ale that Bryce (boyfriend of Allie from Alexandra Bee Blog!), Chris and Ryan started brewing months ago. It was delicious!! Apparently, Cotton liked it too…

We played around with our random furniture for awhile and were able to figure out seating for thirteen people on the deck! I decorated outside with furniture, pillows, lighting and a rug from World Market, paper goods from Oriental Trading, a tablecloth and rug from Target and tiki torches, flowers and plants from the South of the James Farmers Market and Home Depot.

(don’t you love the pineapple lanterns hanging in the umbrella, thanks Ash!)

One of the things we were most excited about was our new deck. I’m so proud of Ryan for building this (almost – thanks Tyler!) by himself, it turned out awesome!

And once I found out how skilled he truly was, I put him to work on building cornhole boards for us too. I decided to stain them dark and have decals made (purchased here) so you can decide if you want to play on our original hometown side of Greenville, SC, or if you want to play for our current hometown, Richmond, VA! I also couldn’t resist these all-weather chevron cornhole bags either (buy them here).

We had other games as well and made sure to have a good mix of seating options. It was a gorgeous afternoon and we were so excited to have the perfect blend of neighbors and friends from work, home, Junior League, book club and more!

(I was excited to pull out one of my favorite Lilly shifts -purchased a few years ago on Rue La La – to pair with my Kate Spade Tracie Sandals for the event!)

(Think of the above game with sand buckets as oversized beer pong. You play with water in the buckets and toss tennis balls. We had it left over from Carolina Cup so decided to use it again for this party.)

One of my favorite games from the beach growing up is the below, quite chewed up at this point, game with the velcro paddles and tennis ball. Our friend’s gorgeous pup Tahoe found it quite fun as well!