Black Friday Party

To start off December and get the monthly girls in the holiday spirit, I decided to theme our December dinner after Black Friday.  I wanted to have a holiday theme, but one with a little twist.  This led to the craziness of hosting a Black Monday Madness party (since my dinners are actually on Mondays).  I put in some long hours of prep on this one, but I loved how everything turned out.

Invite:  I designed my invitation to look like a Black Friday advertisement, and printed it on 8.5x11 paper.  The image is a Walmart advertisement I found on Google, that I just added text boxes, etc. so that it revealed all the party details in a creative way.  As you may recall if you read my blog regularly, I have no idea how to use Photo Shop, so everything you see in this post is done on Microsoft Word.

Entry:  Although I didn't really make my guests line up and wait outside like Black Friday, I did set up the outside to look like it.  I used wooden stanchions to create an area for the "line"  A sign on the first stanchion told guests to form a line.  I put a Girls R Us sign on the door as if that was the name of our "store."

Decor:  I set my table with a black tablecloth for Black Friday.  I used a shopping cart filled with small kid toys for a centerpiece as well as my daughter's cash register.

For added fun, I made shopping bags using mini gift bags from Michaels.  I cut out logos of various stores to glue to the fronts and spread these around the table.  I also bought some fake money at the Dollar Store to wrap around green napkins.  Black Friday is all about saving money!

I spent hours making coupon place cards for each guest.  I wanted them to be silly, so I found funny/different photos of each guest to use rather than plain typical looks.  Depending on the photo, I then adapted what was being sold and the description of the "product".  I even found fun logos that went with the pictures to spice it up a bit.  These were a bit hit, and we all got a kick out of seeing the photos and reading the silly descriptions.

I made these simple wine charms to go with my theme.  I had everything from 10% off to 80% off.  The images were found on Google Images, printed on card stock, hole punched, and tied with ribbon around the glass stems.

Menu: I created an advertisement with my menu as well.  These were placed at various spots on the table.  The food was free for the first 10 customers on Black Monday = my number of guests for the evening!  I tried to think of clever titles and descriptions to really pull in my theme.  We started with Saving Lots of "Green" Salad.

The main dish was Blackened Chicken Alfredo Pasta, Zucchini Quarters with Black Pepper, and a Little Extra "Dough" bread sticks.  I found the recipe for the pasta on This Week for Dinner.  I followed the recipe except that I used the grill instead of pan frying/oven.  This dish has a bit of a kick, which I usually can't tolerate, but I actually enjoyed it.  The spice was strong, but not overpowering.

The dessert was Million Dollar Chocolate Pudding Pie with Peppermint.   This is an easy dessert that is great for the holidays. I called it Million Dollar pie to pull in the theme and created dollar signs out of chocolate.  The original recipe made stars.

Favor: The whole purpose of Black Friday is to save money and spend money.  This is why I created a purse favor. I made a rectangular box for the inside and filled it with some black tissue paper and gold chocolate coins I found at the Dollar Store.  The outside is made with card stock, ribbon, and a scrapbooking rhinestone.  I had to purchase sticky Velcro to keep it closed as the coins were too heavy for just scrapbooking glue/tab.  I designed the priceless tag on Microsoft Word.

We had a great time at this party.  Almost all the details were very inexpensive because I made them all myself; it just took time to create each item. I think it was worth it though.  The girls and I had a lot of laughs and enjoyed the night.  As usual...if you would like any of the documents for a future Black Friday party, just send me an email!  Oh, and please comment below.  I love to hear your thoughts!

Happy Shopping!