New House Party in the dark

What? You mean you don't host parties in the dark? Well we don't normally either but things don't always go according to plan... We planned a big get together with our friends at the new house in late August. We decided to do burgers (sliders actually) and hot dogs since that would be easy and I made some dips and sides and oreo truffles and a couple of people were bringing things too. Oh and of course we had drinks and I made a lemonade wine punch.

We said for people to show up anytime after 6. We put out the food, I snapped these photos quickly and a couple people arrived.

Well no more than 30 minutes later just as more people we arriving the power went out. Terrible timing. Turns out there was a car accident that hit one of the poles on a main road nearby and wiped out a bunch of power.

I sent Eric in search of tea lights while Kyle started grilling.

Eric got the tea lights at the family dollar since Walmart was also out of power. He came back with 90 tea lights! What a champ :)  Our house gets a lot of great natural light but as soon as it was getting too dark inside we lit those things all over the place in the kitchen/breakfast area and the family room and eventually on the back porch.

We wanted people to be able to see each other and the food they were eating after all. We used at least 60 of them by the time the party was over.

Thank goodness we had the food made ahead of time and only needed the gas grill AND thank goodness that we were having a very mild summer so it didn't get warm inside the house.

Despite no power making it hard to give house tours we had a great time at the candle lit party. And the power did come back on about midnight so at least we weren't without it for too long.

This was just the first of many get togethers at our new home so hopefully the power will cooperate in the future. I know I'm definitely keeping tea lights on hand just in case :)