Sunday Dinner Project

Everyone who knows me knows that I have a monthly Sunday Dinner. It started in 2010 and has gone continuously since. September will be 15 years of Sunday dinners. 

Each Sunday dinner, with the exception to the first one, we take a group photo. It started as a "normal" photo where we're all sitting and smiling like normal people. Then we take a "goofy" photo where everyone makes a funny face. I love this so much. 

I decided that I wanted to document the Sunday dinners and their photos. So, I made the decision to scrap all the Sunday dinner photos. 

My original thought was to use up a bunch of kits I have from the Hip Kit Club. I get monthly kits from them and as you can imagine, they start to pile up. So I grabbed 4 of the most basic kits and decided I would use those up. Along the way, I used other of their kits that had more themes to them, like October and Summer themes. 

Well my friends, today I finished this project! I'm all caught up with Sunday dinners, with the exception to July's of this year. But since that just happened I feel like that's ok. 

Stats:

• 3 months effort; my best guess is over 40 hours of work
• 122 pages

This project was a ton of fun. To go back and look through all the photos, I found myself smiling from ear to ear.

The first years of Sunday dinner I was WAY more into it. I wouldn't let anyone bring anything to dinner. I did it all, from appetizer to dessert. And I was way more energetic about the meals. Making them masterpieces in a way.

I also had a lot more people attending. The biggest Sunday dinner was 18 people. The house I was in was bigger so it could contain 18 hungry souls. The house I'm in now, 10 max really. 

It was interesting to see the people who have come and gone over the years too. Some we've lost. Some moved. Some just stopped coming (or being invited). Some are still here. I have now what I consider my core tribe. Each month a combination of the same 10 people. 

We have some annual themes we do for Sunday dinner too. It started as Pumpkin carving being the first "annual" theme. Then I added the December theme of "Cookie Exchange". Now we have two more fun ones to go along with those: Low Country Boil month and Paella month. 

We've celebrated birthdays along the way and had several with themes beyond the ones above. 

It’s hard to believe that it’s been 15 years since the first Sunday dinner. So much has happened in those 15 years and I'm thrilled we're still going strong. Will we go another  15? Hard to say. But I'll keep doing these until I can no longer do them.