{ranai}

After months of waiting, Game of Thrones is BACK for season 5! As a book reader, I was most stoked to see Dorne and the Sand Snakes and perhaps find out what the heck will happen with the Meereenese knot. Bring on the spoilers because I am ready to know the answers to all of my questions!  And since we’re Qute Hoots, we had to celebrate the return of our fav show in style.

We’ve had a couple of GOT dinners now, and we decided this was the year to focus on one region as our theme. I went back and forth between Meereen and Dorne, but settled on Dorne because it is such a fascinating locale with a lot of spice and citrus in their food. Their motto is “Unbowed. Unbent. Unbroken.” They’re pretty hard core awesome.

Jessica has a pretty magical deck where we hosted the dinner party. We created a low seating area using cinder blocks, a pallet, and a couple of boards (all random stuff from around the house). Check out my tutorial here to create something similar.

The locale of Dorne is based on Morocco and Spain.  We used jewel tones with gold accents for our color palette. Creating the look for a dinner party doesn’t have to cost a lot. We grabbed anything around the house that fit the overall theme. I mounted printed sigils of Dorne to foam core and cut them out. We made the floor cushions with sheets of foam from Home Depot and an outdoor fabric from Joann Crafts and Fabrics. This was one of the only purchases we made for decor because Jessica wanted the cushions for her deck chairs afterwards.

And of course we had to have some snakes! I found some inexpensive rubber snakes online and spray painted them gold.

Our menu was super fab! Neither one of us is huge on cooking, so we stuck to dishes that weren’t incredibly labor intensive.

Little bites:

• Marinated artichoke hearts
• Jalapeño and chili pistachios
• Dried fruit
• Mixed olives
• Pepper salami
• Brie
• Herbed mozzarella
• Spicy cheddar
• Crackers
• Hummus

Main:

• Spicy shredded chicken (This is a crockpot recipe! if you follow it add TONS more spice to make it uber Dornish)
• Blood orange and carrot salad (FYI blood oranges are not in season in NorCal in April so we substituted cuties. It was delish, but not fearsome sounding)
• Flat bread

Drinks:

• Ginger mint libation (AKA Moscow Mules- our fav!)
• Pomegranate sangria (OMG yummy)

The only thing left was to settle in for an awesome season premier! But first, we had to take a selfie.

And lastly, how cute is Andrew’s colleague, Cheryl? She came dressed as a queen! Best guest ever!