Totally 80's Party

This past Monday, marked 8 years of continuous monthly dinners for the girls and I.  It is crazy to think that I have hosted  96 different dinner themes over the years! Time has flown by, and I love the friendships that have been strengthened over these past 8 years.  I wanted this month's dinner theme to tie in with the 8 idea.  I ended up deciding on a Totally 80's party!

Invite:  I tried to pull in as many 80's references on my invite as possible.  I looked up a list of the top 100 80's songs to find some song titles that could go with what I wanted to say.  I also used some popular sayings of the 80's.  It was fun to create.  Inviting your guests to dress up is essential to any 80s party...what a fun decade for clothing!

Entry Decor:  I made this Lite Brite inspired sign for the entry.  It is a piece of black foam board that I made a frame around with card stock.  The logo letters are also cut from card stock.  Then I just poked colored Christmas lights through the foam board to spell out "hello" and plugged it in.  My plan was also to put down a yellow slip 'n' slide leading up to the front door, but I couldn't find one at Goodwill, so I had to forgo that.

Inside decor:  I made this giant Pacman backdrop with a black plastic tablecloth, blue painter's tape, and dot/figures cut out of card stock.  It was easy to put together and made a great photo backdrop.

For centerpieces on the table, I bought colorful Slinkies from the Dollar Tree.  I also made a giant Rubik cube out of a box and card stock.  I glued the card stock and then used black electrical tape (sliced into thinner strips) for the black lines.  As you can see in the photo, some of the tape didn't stick that well.  If you create this, you may want to glue it down to avoid falling tape.

On my serving table, I also put out some of my old toys from the 80's.  I decorated with the Cabbage Patch Dolls and My Little Ponies that my daughter now plays with. My husband has old Atari joysticks and a Space Invaders game that I set out.

I made Pacman plates using yellow and black paper plates. I simply cut a wedge out of a black plate and glued it to the yellow plate.  I added a black eyeball cut from card stock.  I found My Little Pony napkins at Party City.

For place cards, I used Garbage Pail Kids images.  I found each of my guest's names and printed out the image. I did not order the actual cards.  It wasn't worth the money for me, and I couldn't get all the names of my guests.  For those guests that I could not find Garbage Pail Kid cards for, I found ones that I could just change the name on Photoshop (example Martian Mary changed to Martian Maria).

Drinks:  For each of my menu items, I pulled in movie quotes/concepts from popular 80's movies.  I always serve wine at these parties, but I wanted to serve a fun cocktail as well. I decided on making a watermelon cocktail to go with the famous line from the Dirty Dancing movie, "I carried a watermelon." .

I found the recipe on The Taylor House for this drink.  It was tasty, but not sweet enough for my taste. I liked the idea though.

For wine charms, I used images of neon cassette tapes, and I added each guest's name.

I made wine labels using two popular songs from the 80's.  I found the cassette covers of Billy Idol's "White Wedding" for my chardonnay, and UB40's "Red Red Wine" for my Cabernet.

Menu:  We started with a Footloose and fancy free spinach salad with Kevin Bacon dressing.  I made this salad with spinach, hard boiled eggs, bacon, and red onion.  The dressing was made with the bacon grease, red wine vinegar, Dijon mustard, sugar, salt, and pepper.  It was yummy!

I served chicken as my main dish to represent the quote from Back to the Future, "What you are McFly, Chicken?"  This is an easy chicken recipe I make all the time.  Nothing special, but always a big hit.

The side dishes were green peppers cut to resemble light sabers from Star Wars and mashed potatoes with pepper eyes to represent Ghostbusters.

For dessert, I served Strawberry Shortcakes.  Simple and easy.

Favor:  I decided to make cake pop joysticks as favors for the guests. I bought a 2x4 at Home Depot and cut it into squares.  I painted each square black and drilled a hole large enough to fit my lollipop stick.  The red button is cut from card stock and adhered with double-sided sticky foam so that it was elevated a little bit.

I designed a Game Over tag on Photoshop to attach to the joysticks.

We had a great time at this party celebrating 8 years of Monthly Dinners. Hope you enjoyed these ideas, and you are inspired to host your own 80's party.  It was radical!