Party Like It's The Frozen North

In an effort to beat the shocking, life-sucking heat wave in Los Angeles this weekend, we decided to throw a bash honoring that part of the world where it's generally very cold: Scandinavia! I'm Swedish, my friend is Norwegian, our third posse member had just been in Stockholm--et voila, a bash is born. (Also, as you may gather from my post on Swedish chic, I am utterly convinced that Sweden is the best country in the universe--and therefore also an extremely good theme for a party.) It was last-minute, on the cheap, ridiculous...a.k.a. totally great. Since the event was definitely food- and fashion-related, here's the report:

MENU: In order to be thoroughly authentic, we obviously had to forgo the grocery store and instead do a major IKEA run. We scored Swedish meatballs, lingonberry preserves (for the meatballs, of course, since all right-minded people put fruit on their ground meat), Knackebrod (dark Scando crispbreads; apparently, the hole in the middle is traditionally made with a broom handle) with Danish cheeses and sliced cucumber, canapés with peppery cream cheese & smoked salmon & caviar (swank, no?), and Swedish gingersnaps. We decided against pickled herring for obvious reasons (and also because it's just nasty). Oh yes, and let's not forget little bowls of Swedish fish (duh!) and chocolate Dalahasten (Swedish horses) (see below).

We did not serve bowls of real Swedish horses, however.

"The qualities that the North Swedish Horse possesses are energy, durability, stamina, and respectable longevity."

Ah, good old respectable longevity...which reminds me, in order to help test our guests' durability, stamina, etc., we of course had to have a big old bottle of Sweden's own Absolut (the grapefruit kind--my fave. Hey, my party!). Tasted fab with the random Scandinavian berry juice we had plus a little seltzer. Or, you know, straight from the bottle.

FASHIONHAGGEN: On the fashion front, I managed to assemble an entirely Nordic getup (thanks, H&M and my blue-and-yellow Converses). I would've worn my Cheap Monday jeans to mix up the labels a bit, but the 100-degree weather persuaded me otherwise. Others obliged with chich that would put bike-riding Norwegians to shame. We all tried to channel thoughts of Scando snow as we ate our salty, fishy foods and listened to a playlist of exclusively Nordic bands (their ratio of good bands is so unfairly high. Even their white rappers are better than ours.).

For more reasons Sweden rules, go here. For my patented family recipe for Swedish meatballs, go here. THAT'S RIGHT, NO LINK, SUCKAS! You'll never get that secret out of me.

The real question now is: where's that last little bit of Havarti? It might go well with a little Robyn on the stereo.

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