Seafood Bake On The Shore

In the theme of Thankful November. I thought I would share the highlight of my summer. I was abundantly blessed this year to spend my birthday in August with some of my favorite people. While I don't particularly like being the center of attention, I love using my birthday as an excuse to gather all my family and friends in one place and spoil them. I love the Oregon coast every misty, green enchanting bit of it so I decided this year I wanted to host my party on my favorite beach. 

My love of the beach is probably only second to my love of seafood. It's a problem, my husband keeps telling me if I was an animal I would be a sea otter getting to swimming all day, breaking oysters on my tummy and napping he's convinced I'd be in heaven. So we figured why not throw in my otter tendencies and go full seafood and just like that my theme was done: barefoot on the beach, seafood bake on the shore. 

A shout out to my Crafty partner Kristen for creating these awesome invites for me!

This party wasn't going to just be a little shindig on the beach, no sir I had big plans for this little weekend of mine. While I was excited to spend Saturday with all my friends it's been years since my family was able to take a vacation together. With kids still in sports, high school, college and a few of us grown up with kids or busy careers it's really hard to match schedules. I really wanted to give us a chance to decompress and enjoy each others company before everyone headed into a busy fall. The hubby and I have been blessed for years to enjoy a friends family cabin on many group trips and I couldn't think of a better place to share with my family. A few phone calls later and our friend helped me arrange hosting my family and a few guests at the family cabin. A huge blessing that allowed us to afford to host everyone.

My little slice of shared heaven...

Magically we managed to get everyone to run away to the beach with us for a full weekend. My family and a few friends joined us at the cabin for the weekend of games, shared meals and walks on the beach. Then all of our guests joined us on Saturday for the main event. My wonderful sister-in-law even postponed her family's trip to Disneyland by a day so they could join us for the seafood bake portion of the weekend. The family helped set up our make shift table and cook off the amazing seafood. While guests flew kites, shucked oysters and played in the sand.

Kite Master...

Dad managed the boil pots...

Guests learned how to shuck oysters...

 Baked for the faint of heart...

Raw for the adventurous...

We all enjoyed baskets of fresh oysters, crawfish, bbq chicken, corn on the cob, and mussels Oregon coast seafood bake style! The best part was the built in ability to use driftwood logs for our seating and burying the table legs into the sand for easy family style seating.

This is a weekend that brought everything I'm thankful for together in one place the family God gave me, the extended family he blessed me with, the friends he graces my life with and this wonderful state I get to call home. I think this picture says it all.

Happy heart...