Chillin' with my Gnomies

Gnomes are all the rage right now, and why not? They are so cute!  I decided to theme our December monthly dinner around gnomes with a Chillin' with my Gnomies party!  This was super fun to create & we had a blast eating our gnome-themed food, painting our gnome craft, and of course hanging with our gnomies to catch up.

Invite:  Since this was a holiday party, I designed the invitations with red, green, and white as the accent colors.  I purchased a design of a gnome on Etsy, and after getting permission from the designer, I used this same gnome on much of my party decorations including the invitation.

Decor:  I purchased a few items for this party, but most of the amazing gnomes I borrowed from friends.  For the dining table, I used two snowflake decorations I already owned as the centerpiece along with lots of gnomes.  The cute MERRY gnomes were borrowed.  The two gnomes on the each end of the centerpiece were wine bottle covers that I purchased from Amazon in a 4-pack and just placed these two on pint glasses.

For a place card, I used the gnome from my invitation, and just added each guest's name to the beard.  Instead of napkin rings, I folded a green paper napkin into a hat to add to the place card.  Easy and cute.

For my beverage and favor table, I borrowed these amazing gnomes for the table and the mantle.  I love them so much, and they really added to the decorations.

The beverage and favor table.

Instead of designing wine bottle labels, I purchased these gnome bottle covers from Amazon to use.  As stated above, they were a 4 pack and I only needed two for wine, so the other two created gnomes for my centerpiece.

For wine charms, I purchased these small wooden gnomes from Amazon. I was originally planning to use them as place cards, but when they arrived and were smaller than I anticipated.  I decided to use them for wine charms instead.  I used my Cricut to put the first initial of each guest on the beard.

Outside, I borrowed this blow-up gnome for my front yard to welcome guests to the party. 

Menu:  Turns out, the only gnome food ideas I found online were desserts, so I had to invent my own meal. We started with a Gnome Garden (Salad).  I cut radishes to look like mushrooms.  On top of the green spinach, I added garbanzo beans, feta cheese, and pecans. Guests could choose either an Italian dressing or a Balsamic Vinaigrette.

I decided to make Gnome-made giant meatballs wrapped in bacon along with mashed potatoes for the main meal.  Although they don't look amazing, my attempt was to have each one look like a gnome head and beard.  I made mini party hats with holiday cardstock to place on top.  For this dinner, I used ground turkey instead of ground beef.  I think the balls would have stayed a bit more round with beef, as the turkey was harder to shape into a ball and flattened a bit in the oven.  For the nose, we just used garbanzo beans.

I made these holiday gnome cupcakes for dessert.  I dipped the waffle cones in red candy melts to give it a little something.  The beard, nose, and green body is gnome-made frosting.

Party Activity: At our December monthly dinners, I always like to have some sort of craft for us to do.  I wanted to make it a simple one that could be done in a short amount of time, so I opted for painted wooden gnomes.  Love how they came out.

My husband cut all the 2x4 pieces of wood before the event.  They were around 10" tall and sanded. I couldn't find wooden circles at the craft store, so I bought brown/tan pom poms to use for the noses.  For the beard, guests could choose from craft fur or a white mop.  The mops are from the dollar store and each mop can make a ton of these gnomes.  The craft fir can make a few gnomes, but is more expensive.  Some guests made eyebrows for their gnome, some did not.

Our first finished gnome of the evening.

Love this spirited gnome my friend painted for her young daughter.  She even painted the mop strands of the beard slightly.

Forgot to get a group photo at this dinner, but we had a great time together to close out our last monthly dinner for 2022.

Sweater Weather

 

It is starting to get a little cold outside, and the air is crisping up as we near the holidays.  For this reason, I decided to host my November monthly dinner with a Sweater Weather theme. It has been a busy few weeks, so I kept things simple for this dinner.

Invite: So many sweater invitations are geared toward Ugly Christmas sweaters, but this party was in November, so I wanted to stay away from Christmas vibes.  I found a sweater background, and added pink to it by switching some of the hearts to pink.  I chose pink only because it matched the doll clothes I was using for other decorations.  Besides a little PhotoShop editing, I stayed pretty simple with the invitation.

Decorations: I used a deep blue tablecloth that matched the invitation to cover the table and added some snowflake decorations I found 60% off at Hobby Lobby.  By the way....60% off in the middle of November?  The shelves were almost empty of Christmas decorations and it isn't even close to Christmas!  Yikes! 

I borrowed my younger daughter's American Girl doll sweaters and winter head gear to wrap around wine glasses to add some sweater decor.  I also added a mini braided scarf that my older daughter made to weave throughout the centerpiece.

I folded pink paper napkins to look like sweaters.  This was pretty easy.  I found a tutorial on the Internet and it was easy to follow.  It would have looked better with cloth instead of paper, but I didn't have cloth in any wintery colors.

For place cards, I made these sweater cap ornaments in various colors.  They are really easy to make with just yarn and a piece cut from an empty toilet paper roll.  I stuffed the inside with a tissue to make it poof a little.  The names were next to each hat made to match the invitation.

I found a garland at Michaels that was made of bright colored yarns.  It had all the colors of the party.  I added it above the beverage table along with more snowflakes and lit candles.

I usually make my own creative wine labels for these dinners, but I decided to keep it easy and just use more of my daughter's doll sweaters.  I added a yarn scarf to one.  If you are doing an ugly Christmas sweater party, there are quite a few cute wine sweaters on Amazon.

For wine charms, I printed mini sweaters that I found from images online.  Super easy.  I just had to hand cut them and tape them to the wine stem.

Menu:  Sweater Weather to me means warm comfort food, so that's what I made. 

I started with a woven bread bowl to tie in the knitted sweater idea.  I bought pre-made french bread dough and just used that to make it easy.  The dough was sliced and then woven around a bowl that could go in the oven with aluminum foil wrapped around it and sprayed with cooking spray.  It was brushed with egg wash, and then baked for about 30 minutes, rotating it regularly.

There was some space between the woven bread because we thought it would expand a little, but it didn't very much.  For this reason, I decided to use the glass bowl it had baked around to place inside to hold the salad.  The salad was an Autumn Salad with Apple Cider Vinaigrette.  I found the recipe at Thriving Home here.  It had greens, Feta cheese, bacon, Honey Crisp apples, dried cranberries, and walnuts.

For the main mean, I made a Red Wine Beef Stew in the crockpot.  I got the recipe from The Bewitchin' Kitchen here.  I served it over parmesan cheese and garlic mashed potatoes.  It was tasty and easy. I made it in the morning before I left for work, and then didn't have to do anything but make the mashed potatoes when I got home from work.

For dessert I made S'Mores Pies which were super easy.  I bought individual graham cracker crusts, put half of a broken up Hershey bar in the bottom, and added marshmallows to the top.  I baked them in the oven and just a quick broil to brown them.  They were tasty, but not my favorite dessert.  I don't think I would make them again.  Just a regular roasting of s'mores over the fire would have been fun.

Favor:  For a parting favor, I made my guests these travel mugs with a sweater and "It's all about Sweater Weather" on the front to match the image on the party invitation.  I bought the travel coffee mugs from Michaels ($2 each). I already had scraps of the vinyl.  These were time consuming to make since the letters were small, but they turned out cute.

I used the giant flower pot mug I made way back when I did a Friends theme to hold the hot chocolate packets that guests also took home with their party favor.

As usual, the girls and I had a great time catching up with each other.  We had a few that had to cancel last minute due to the winter sickness that is going around lately, but those of us that were healthy enough to come enjoyed our time together.

License to Drive - Sweet 16

Every month for sixteen years, the girls and I have been getting together for Monthly Dinners.  It is hard to believe that much time as passed by and that many dinner party themes have been created!  We've created some amazing friendships over the years.  To celebrate this 16 year milestone, I decided to theme my last monthly dinner License to Drive with decor and menu focused on getting that coveted driver's license.

Invite: For the invitation, I designed a large driver's license.  Although I was hoping to design it like the old school license we all received at age 16, I couldn't find a free background of it, so I just made a license that looked similar.  For the headshot, I photoshopped photos from our 16 years of monthly dinners making sure each guest who could attend was in at least two photos.  I shaped them into the outline of a headshot.  This took a bit of time, but it was really fun to look and remember the themed dinners they were from.  The rest of the invite had the party details, but was modeled after the order and look of a true license.

Decor: I used a plain black tablecloth and make two yellow road lines down the center with card stock.  I bought a small black tire to use as a centerpiece.  I printed the invitation out to set on top and made some car related signs to place on skewers stuck into the holes in the tire center. 

Along the table, I also printed out various road signs you need to know during the driver's test.

For each place card, I designed a driver's license to match each guest.  Some of the girls I have known since sophomore year, so I was able to use their yearbook photos from that year.  For others, I messaged their parents, husbands, anyone that I could think of that might have access to a 16 year old photo of them.  

For those guests that I could remember where they lived when they were 16, I used that address on the license.  For those I had no idea, I just invited a fun/silly address that matched their interests or something about them.  It was super fun to see these old photos of all of us.

For the place setting, I used the colors of a stoplight.  Red plate, yellow bowl, and a green napkin.  For each napkin, I printed out a question on the driver's license exam as a kind of napkin ring.

The place setting also included a DMV Road Sign bingo card.  In between the meal and dessert, we played a few rounds of bingo using M&Ms as our markers.

Coming up with creative wine labels was a bit of a challenge for me with this theme, but I settled on playing up more road sign and driver related items.  For the white wine, I created a label with a side mirror. In the mirror I had glasses of white wine, and the text read "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear" with a "thank goodness" underneath.  For the red wine, I used a stop sign with "red wine ahead" added.  Above the stop sign, it reminded guests to "obey all traffic signs."

For wine charms, I printed out the same road signs used on the bingo cards to place on each glass.

Menu:  Coming up with a menu that went with a driver's license theme was challenging as well. I decided to go with a car theme of cars that a young driver might be driving.  I had a Toyota Corolla as my first car, so that was my inspiration and what started me on this thinking.  We started with a delicious salad I called the Ford "Fiesta" Salad after the Fiesta model of car.  This was a bed of greens with roasted corn, sliced red peppers, queso fresco, and Ford "Pinto" beans.  I made a dressing with Corona beer calling it Toyota "Corona" Dressing.  My menu card included these 3 cars.

Along with the salad, I made a chicken tortilla soup.  I called this Toyota "Supra": Creamy Chicken "Tesla"-tilla.  Tesla cars were definitely not around when I was a teen, but I am sure there are some spoiled teens out there driving one!

For dessert, I wanted to make something that went with the Volkswagen Bug as that was a really popular car when I was 16.  I decided to make mug cakes.  My daughter has been making them lately for herself, so I decided to try it for the dinner.  This recipe was a chocolate chip mug cake that you microwave for a few minutes and then serve.  I whipped them up while the ladies played bingo and talked.  I added a dollop of whip cream and a Volkswagen bug cupcake topper I made before serving.

Favor: What 16 year old, doesn't love getting handed keys to a new or used car when they get their driver's license?  I remember driving my parents huge Buick when I got my license, and even though it wasn't my car, it was nice to have keys to a car to drive when I needed to.  Making chocolate keys seems like a perfect favor for this theme.  I made two giant keys for each guest tying them together like a key ring at the top.  I made a tag I was originally going to attach to the keys like a keyring, but it covered too much of the key, that I decided to just attach it to the top of the bag.  The tag was a license plate with SWEET16 as the number.  The month and tag year matched those of the party.

This is such a great group of friends and although all 11 of us couldn't make it to tonight's dinner, it was wonderful that so many could.  Although my last minute planning on these dinners and details is always last minute and stressful, I do really enjoy this creative outlet and the time with these ladies once a month.  I am blessed.