Pizza Party: BYOT

A couple weeks ago, some friends brought back an annual tradition: the BYOT Pizza Party. Daphne and Dave provided the dough, sauce and cheese and the guests brought toppings to make a melange of delicious homemade pizzas.

Last year's BYOT party set a high standard, but this year many of the party-goers were seasoned BYOT-ers, and we exceeded all expectations.

We saw a whole slew of dough-rolling techniques at the party, from gentle stretching

To tossing in the air:

To kneading (dough and back):

And improvised rolling:

The toppings were deluxe, including lox:

Pesto, pepper and goat cheese:

And barbecue chicken:

Daphne had these great chalkboard wine glasses so everyone could label and track their own drinks:


With a hands-on event like BYOT, everyone gets in the spirit, and the party makes itself:

What a seriously fun night. Since Daphne and Dave are fellow singers, we had a classic showtune-sing-along until the party finally came to a close in the wee hours of the morning.

Birthday Girl

I discovered forgotten pictures from Cait's birthday celebration in my treasure trove of a memory card.

We started the night with a delicious dinner at Darlington House's basement cantina. After the meal, we surprised Cait with homemade carrot-cake cupcakes, lit with candles we filched from the bar.

We pressed onward, a couple blocks away, to Cafe Japone, for hours of karaoke and sake bombs. If you've never been, give Cafe Japone a try - and be prepared to sing your throat out. Unfortunately, most of these pictures are NSFMB (not safe for my blog) so if you want to see them, give me a holler!

Six Weeks Late, New Years Eve

January was a crazy month for me, and a result, I let six weeks pass before unloading pictures from my camera. There are some real gems hidden away, including some great/tragic pictures from New Year's Eve.

This year, my friends rented a suite at Hotel Palomar in Rosslyn, overlooking the DC skyline. It was a beautiful room in a beautiful hotel, and hopefully we didn't knock down Hotel Palomar's reputation too much with our antics.

The excitement was palpable as party-goers arrived.

 

There were nauseatingly adorable couples.

Dressed-to-the-nines couples.

Lots of picture-taking. With bonus WTF face courtesy of James.

And what night would be complete without a game or ten of beer pong?!

I also spent a good part of the night obsessing over Grae's eyes. She gets super self-conscious, but is a good sport when I insist she let photograph them.

And there you have it: a sneak peak at our New Year's Eve night, only a month and a half late. Now to go through the rest of my pictures.

Goodies

I love creating digital art, using photographs, shapes, sketches, textures, patterns and colors to create an interesting image. One of my recent pieces is called Goodies:

I created it by using over twenty layers of pattern and texture, along with my own photography and found, ahem, diagrams.