When there is a Princess in your life, excitement reigns! She moves through the house like a whirl wind, baking, working and studying and texting. Because she likes to have a plan, we began the college journey early in her junior year. First she had her sights set on Villanova. Then nothing but Boston College would do. Finally after a visit to NYU she decided nothing, but nothing would be as good, wonderful, interesting, fabulous or as incredible as New York University. Without this school, her life would come to a crashing halt. There would be no future, no decent law school would accept her and she would live her life in despair wondering what could have been. She applied for early admission and we waited.......holding our breath. One night last week a packet arrived that created chaos in our house.
No one got to sleep before 1 AM, the phone rang off the hook. Luckily the camera was on the table and I snapped a few pics of her Dance of Joy!
As she called her friends, their parents called us and finally I turned off my cell phone in hopes we could all settle down to a night's sleep.
A family celebration was in order. We decorated the dining room with purple streamers, napkins and a a lovely bunch of purple tulips. (Once in a Blue Moon would have been proud of me!) It's not easy finding purple napkins and decorations during the Christmas Season! Our center piece was the Statue of Liberty, representing New York. 
We started with a salad of baby arugula, romaine, oven roasted tomatoes and mozzarella cheese with a vinaigrette of her favorite Balsamic Vinegar.
Marcella Hazan's Bolognese Sauce topped rigatoni ( Hungry Dog, one of my favorite Blogs has already posted this recipe, so here's a link to her site) and Uju's Chocolate Mousse was the finish.
