My perfect New Year’s Eve was designed within just a few hours. I was on the train home to Ottawa and messaged my friend Katie on Facebook to see if she had plans. Lucky me she didn’t! I asked if I could “host” a dinner party at her place and voila the plans took shape. A Pinterest board for inspiration was made, a Trello to do list so we could coordinate shopping was done and a FaceBook invite was sent out.

It ended up just being the two of us but we still made it amazing and had so much food and booze to ourselves!

The menu consisted of cheese and crackers as we were cooking, a black kale salad with parmesan for an app and the main course was homemade roasted squash & apple ravioli. The ravioli were actually pretty easy to make. We roasted kombucha squash and apples in the oven, threw the ricotta and goat cheese in a bowl and whipped it all together once the roasting was done. The wonton wrappers were easy to maneouver with a little water on the edges and voila homemade ravioli. We boiled them for 2-3 mins and then dug in.

For dessert I made healthier cheesecake tartlets the night before. The first step was to make the crust & bake it with blueberry preserves in the oven. I mixed the cheesecake part and put it into a plastic bag for piping upon arrival at Katie’s. See finished product below.

Our romantic table setting for two!

We dressed up for all of 15 mins that it took to eat dinner and then hurried into pjs!

We set up her DVD player so we could watch the movie New Year’s Eve, ran into the street at midnight to light sparklers, talked endlessly about boys, life and our careers. It was the perfect balance of conversation, champagne & being utterly relaxed to enter the new year without stress.

Here’s to friendship, ushering in the New Year the way we wanted to full of friendship love.