My Savings Projects are Multiplying!

My mom just sent me and K an email saying that she used her frequent flier miles to book us plane tickets to Italy to celebrate her 60th birthday with her! I'm way psyched, and also, of course, really grateful for the plane ticket (and for K too! my mom is awesome).

This intensifies the urgency of my desire to throw her a dinner party for her birthday after she gets back from Italy (she & my dad are spending the whole summer). My own table will be entirely inadequate, so I'll be co-opting my parents' kitchen & dining room, but other than take off for the day to a museum or something, they won't have to do anything. I'd like to invite as many people as their big dining room table will seat (12-14) and do a full menu of hors d'oeuvres, appetizer, entree, and dessert, all full of gorgeous late-summer produce. Maybe a cheese and fruit plate, too. Mmm. My dad will probably want to do the wine (he's bossy about stuff like that), but I don't want him to pay for the rest. I should be able to feed 12-14 people really well on $250-300.

Of course, it would be a little silly to start saving that $300 right now, seeing as it's March and her birthday's in August, but it's #2 on my Things To Save For list, preceded by the one I'm working on now: about $400 in startup cash for my secret internet project (no, I won't tell you what it is yet).