Bella's la Hanau Dinner

I don't remember if I had mentioned this before, but Princess Cupcake and Princess Jellybean call my mum Bella.

When my 8 year old was a bun in the oven, I read online about alternative names for Grandma. I found something where a mother wrote her mom wanted her grandson to call her Bella for beautiful. After sitting on a list of names for a few weeks, my mum chose Bella in the end.

Bella's a New Year's Eve baby. I knew she had plans already so I invited her and my dad over for dinner on Friday.

I laid out an antipasto platter:

More wine was picked up earlier in the day:

I actually liked this red a little better than Christmas Eve's.

Some asparagus was roasted with EVOO, kosher salt, garlic powder, and pepper:

And I made again Pioneer Woman's My Favorite Meatloaf. I forgot we didn't have any bacon but that's okay.

I had made this recipe once before. My freeform loaf was too high so it took almost two hours to bake. This time, I made sure to pat it down to a flatter loaf. It was as long and as wide as the top of the broiler pan.

Hubbie picked up the ordered, chocolate mousse cake from our favorite, local bakery:

During the day, Princess Cucpake had hung out at Bella & Big Pop's while her moi moi (little sister) attended a playdate in the area. My aspiring pastry chef made with her grandmother Betty Crocker's Hot Chocolate Cupcakes and brought them over:

Can I tell you I just had one last night while we dames watched Ratatouille and oh boy, do they really taste like hot cocoa!

And of course, the newest addition to our clan was invited and slept through the whole celebration:

Miranda is such a solid, good sleeper. I tried tickling her to wake her up so she wouldn't give her mum and dad a bad time at night but she would just twitch, yawn, and then fall back asleep with her little mouth open, LOL!