If having a Welcome Fall party wasn’t a thing, this year I certainly made it one! I’ve been wanting to throw a little shindig like this for ages and I’m so thankful for my in-laws for lending me their space to do it!

This is another one of those posts where the pictures did not come out as well as I wanted and I didn’t get the shots that I wanted, mainly because by the time everything was laid out, guests had arrived and my mind was in fifty million different places making sure everything was ready and in place (I’m learning that’s probably always the case when throwing a party). And no one really gets it when you’re taking pictures of food for your blog, so I tried to snap some pretty quickly with hardly no questions asked or weird looks!

When inviting my guests, I requested everyone bring their favorite Fall inspired dish. Here’s a list of the things that I would be making:

• mulled wine
• mulled apple cider
• cornbread (which I wanted quick and easy and chose one where you “just add water”. Horrible idea)
• 2 ingredient pumpkin muffins
• season salt roasted potatoes (these were multicolored potatoes which included purple potatoes! Quite festive!)

My Mother-in-law made her famous Apples and Sausage, the hubby made Chicken Bacon Wraps (which were gone pretty quickly). We had a ton of desserts including Apple fritter muffins, pumpkin pie with a pecan topping, and a walnut pie. My Father-in-law made sure we had some pumpkin beer on hand and got us some Angry Orchard apple beer/hard cider as well (yum!). It turned out to truly be a feast and we had such a great time just spending time catching up with friends.

For the mulled wine and cider, I was able to get mulling spices from a local spice market that included a bag to put them in, and then my Mother-in-law had mulling spices on hand from Williams-Sonoma. The mulling mix that I got at the spice market had Anise added in, which I took out since I don’t like licorice flavors. The balance of Cinnamon, Clove, and All Spice was perfect!

*By the way, if you ever go into a grocery store asking someone where their mulling spices are, be prepared for strange looks. Is this not a thing? No one knew what I was even saying! “What spices? Melon spices?” NO. That’s not it, never mind, you clearly don’t have what I’m looking for.

I kept the mulled wine on the stove in the pot on simmer since it’s best served warm and had everyone dish out their own in a wine glass. The majority of it was gone by the end of the night! I’m so glad they liked it!

These quilted mason jars were a must to enjoy our mulled cider! I blame Pinterest for this inspiration, including the paper straws (that I got for $1.50 at Michaels!). Luckily, I already had these jars on hand from a previous project, so I was very glad to use them and turn them into drinking glasses.

And let’s not forget the Fall themed plates, cups, and cutlery I scoured around for! The plates were a great (and fair priced) find at Michael’s, and the rest were found at a party store. You have no idea how happy I was to find Fall themed paper plates and napkins! It just makes it more fun and festive for me, which I want to extend to my guests.

If you saw the flowers in the background of those pictures, it’s these velvet looking flowers called coxcomb! I had never seen them before, but pretty much had to pick these up for the party. How cool are these?

It was so much fun to get creative and put it all together. Hopefully we can do this again in years to come!