Beauty and the Geek

I love hosting silly parties, so this month I played on some old stereotypes and hosted a Beauty and the Geek party.

Invite: I designed my invite on Photoshop using the idea of a mirror with faces to represent a beauty and a geek.  Since the monthly dinners are always at my house, I made up an address to go with the theme.  When guests confirmed their attendance, I asked them if they were dressing as a beauty or a geek so I could set their place accordingly.

Entry Decor:  I made a giant calculator out of a piece of foam board and card stock to hang from my door.  I wrote the numbers 07734 and hung it upside down to spell "hello".  My friend also helped me make this giant lipstick out of 2 pieces of poster board.  We used Lancome as inspiration.

Decor:  On each chair, I made beauty queen banners for the Beauties and nerdy signs for the Geeks.  The banners are just a strip of butcher paper that I hot glued the ribbon onto. I cut the letters on my Cricut machine.  I tried to match the banner with each guest, so I had a Party Princess, Duncan (her last name) Diva, Dancing Queen, and Aqua Princess.

The centerpiece was a mixture of Beauty and Geek. I covered a vase with an image of a chalkboard with complicated math on it. I filled the vase with Smarties candies. Instead of flowers, I used Nerd candy boxes and also made beauty queen white chocolate crowns.  On one side of the vase I placed my iPad (with a periodic table on it), and on the other side an eyeshadow pallet.

As a place-mat/utensil holder, I made Geek shirts and dresses out of card stock.  I used little girl's hair bows clipped to the ribbon and slid the utensils under the ribbon.  For the Geek shirts, I glued a piece of card stock as a pocket for the utensils to slide in.

For place cards, I found mini compacts that looked like purses and calculators both at the Dollar Tree.  My original plan was to write the guest's name in lipstick on the mirror, but the mirrors were too small, so I designed a Victoria Secret gift card with the guest's name instead.  For the Geeks, I wrote the guest's name as the numbers on the calculator and designed a library card to also display their name.

I pulled the theme into my drink ware by borrowing some chemistry beakers from a colleague. The tags were Google images of various items associated with beauty.

I also served the cheaper version of Smart Water....i.e. filtered water from my refrigerator with a tag!

Menu:  Coming up with a menu for this was a bit of a creative challenge for me, but I think it worked out in the end.  I started with chips and dip, but added a princess crown to my dip bowl.

For the main meal, I made individual Chicken Pot Pi.  You cannot really tell from this photo, but I added the Pi symbol to the top of each one.  The recipe I used was for one large pot pie with a store-bought pie crust.  I adapted the recipe for individual pies and made my own crust.  They were delicious!

To pull in the beauty part of the theme, I made Red Pepper Lipstick. I cut the bell paper at an angle at the top and then wrapped a half a slice of bacon around the bottom.  Because my oven was full of pot pies, I cooked these on the stove top. I had never tried this before, but it worked, and guests devoured them.

I made Fruit Bytes to finish off the main meal which was just a normal fruit salad.

 
For dessert I served Stiletto cupcakes. These were SUPER cute, but they do take some time to make since I wanted each pair of heels to be different. The heel part I made out of graham crackers and Pirouette cookies. I melted chocolate to hold them in place. 

My daughter wanted her own pink heels, so I made a pair for her (to share with her brother) as well.
 

Favor: Ring pops to represent Beauty and Smartie Pants to represent Geeks.  I used my Cricut to cut the pants and a dab of hot glue to attach the Smarties.  The tag I made on Photoshop.

The girls really got into this theme, and everyone looked great dressed up as a Beauty or Geek. This is another theme I totally recommend!