It's Summer, PHO Sure!

As a teacher, summertime means a little time to relax and destress a little, but of course my monthly dinners still continue.  When trying to come up with a theme for my June monthly dinner a friend suggested a pho theme.  I have never even tried pho, but I decided to run with the idea and combine summer and pho into one theme...

Invite: I found a clipart image of a pho bowl I liked online and centered my color scheme and invite around that.  Added a few puns and simple text.

Decorations: I kept things simple for decor. I used a large wooden serving tray and accent pieces I already owned to place in the center of the table and serve as a pho bar of toppings.  I crafted a couple paper lanterns to set in the tray as well. The toppings I used were limes, cilantro, mint, green onion, bean sprouts, cilantro, soy sauce, and siracha.

I had some fun coming up with place card names for each guest that somehow incorporated "pho" into the description -- un"pho"getable, "pho"cused, "pho"nominal, etc.  I added the guest's name after the description and set them on a pair of chopsticks.

For the napkins, I took blue paper napkins and folded them to look like a karate gi.

I designed the wine labels with pho sayings as well. My favorite was Pho Crying Out Loud...Pour the Red Wine! The white wine played on the Pho-Cast and weather with a 100% chance of chardonnay.

For wine charms, I designed tags with various ingredients of pho and a fun title - Meat Maestro, Broth Babe, Lime Legend, etc.

Menu: Pho the Appetizer, we had chicken potstickers.  I purchased these from Trader Joes.  Simple and quick to prepare on the stovetop and tasty to eat. 

Of course the main Pho-cus of the meal was pho.  I looked at a lot of recipes, and decided on a Vietnamese Beef Noodle Pho from thekichn.com.  To save time, you can purchase the base/broth premade, but I decided to try it from scratch.  Having no experience making or even tasting pho prior to this, I don't really have much to compare this recipe, but I thought it tasted good.  My guests thought the same, but definitely had preferences to the local restaurants they generally order from.

For the dessert Pho-nale, I made a Key Lime Eclair Cake.  It was simple to make & tasty.

Favor: As an easy take-home gift, I purchased individual bowls of Pho from the local dollar store.  I added a pair of chopsticks and a tag that read "Thanks PHO Coming!"  Super simple, but perfect for the theme.

It was a Pho-nominal evening with friends I am Pho-tunate to have!

 

Devil Wears Prada Dinner

The Devil Wears Prada 2 just came out, so I thought it would be fun to host our monthly dinner party with this theme and then go see the movie with the girls at a later date.  My own fashion sense and style is more like Andy pre-Runway for sure, but I definitely had fun pulling things together for this theme.

Invite: I recreated a movie poster with the iconic devil heel for my invitation.  Then kept the rest of the invite simple.  I added "Attendance is Not Optional" for a little Miranda Priestly humor.

Decor: I went with a color scheme of black, white, and red.  I set out a black tablecloth with white and black plates and a red "runway" down the center.  For the centerpiece, I borrowed a Prada wallet and a Louis Vuitton handbag from a friend along with the boxes they came in. I added a vase of white roses (a favorite of Miranda's) and used my Cricut to cut a large red heel to match the invitation.

I also recreated Miranda's Runway binder to add to the centerpiece.  I bought a large spiral notebook from Michaels (I couldn't find white), printed the original cover from the movie to place on the front, and added post-it tabs along the sides and top like the book in the movie.

I folded red paper napkins to look like pleated dresses.  These were easy to make - I just fan folded the napkin and tied a blue ribbon around the waist to secure it.  Then folded the top half inward to look like a strapless dress.

For place cards, I created Runway magazine covers for each guest.  I used ChatGPT to help with these. I added fun details about each guest for taglines and asked ChatGPT to glam up the photo I uploaded of each girl.  They were fun to read and laugh at for sure.

The same friend who loaned me the wallet also had bags, so I used them on and above my beverage table for added fun.

I always design themed wine labels. For the red wine, I called it Miranda's Couture Cab with an image of Miranda and a background of fashion logos. For the white wine, I called it Andy's Cerulean Chardonnay and added an image of Andy in her not-so-glamorous cerulean sweater.

For wine charms, I found images of the main characters that I printed out and cut to adhere to the wine glass stems.  I had a pre-fashion Andy Sachs and a glammed up Andy, but the others were all single characters.

Menu: I started with an appetizer of a mini bowl (dollar store purchase) of corn chowder and a strip of grilled cheese. This was to represent Andy's choice of food in the cafeteria her first day at Runway, and Nate's special grilled cheese he makes Andy that night.

For the main dish, I served ravioli that I toasted in the oven.  I purchased fresh ravioli from Costco for this.  The directions said to boil it, but since I wanted it slow-toasted to go with Miranda's famous quote of "moving at a glacial pace," I looked up some online directions for toasting and tried it out...they were delicious this way!

Photoshopped a Prada logo to add a bowl of "Prada Parm" for added fun.

I served a Cesar Salad as well tying it in with another famous Miranda quote from the movie.

And of course breadsticks because we all need carbs in our life!

I incorporated another fun Emily quote for my dessert, but instead of a cube of cheese, it was a cube of cheesecake. Three different flavors came in the package (from Target).  They were chocolate, raspberry, and New York.

I served coffee with dessert for those interested.  Andy makes so many coffee trips in the movie and it always has to be piping hot for Miranda.

Favor:  I absolutely loved my favors for this party, and they were so simple to put together.  I purchased these mini purse favor bags from Amazon.  They come with the satin fabric to tie and were perfect for this theme.  I filled each purse with a little tissue paper and some mini chocolate bars.

This was a super fun party.  All the girls dressed up in some form, and I played the movie in the background, so it made for some fun conversations throughout the dinner.

Abra Cadabra - A Magical Dinner

I wanted to think of a simple theme I could quickly pull together for my March monthly dinner. I decided on a magician theme -an Abra Cadabra - Celebrating Magical Friendships dinner.  From wands and a top hat to bunny ears and dice decor, it was a fun night with friends.

Invite: I crated a simple black, white, and red invitation with gold glitter accents.  I used images of a top hat, bunny, wand, and cards to pull in iconic magician props. To tie in the "show" aspect, I put the details as a showtime and added the phrase "The Greatest Gathering of Girlfriends Ever Seen!"

For the table, I used a black tablecloth with white and red plates.

As a centerpiece, I set down gold glitter card stock and placed a top hat with a magic wand and a stuffed bunny on top.  I made an arch of cards gluing them to a large zip tie and then put the ends of the zip tie into small glasses filled with dice and red tissue paper to hold it in place.

I added fake bouquets of red flowers, cards, and dice on each side.

I purchased a deck of mini cards from Amazon, lightly glued 3 together, and placed each group of three on a folded napkin.

I created place cards by using hot glue on extra large dice and then adding the guest's name to the top.  I added an alliteration magician title for each guest.

I created magical wine labels for my red and white wine.  I titled the cabernet sauvignon Abraca-Cabernet with a tag line of "Now You See It...Now It's Gone" keeping the same background design as the invitation.  I swapped out the bunny's playing card for a red wine glass. For the white wine, I titled it The Vanishing Vino with a tagline of "White to Wand-erful" adding a wand and a bottle of white wine ready to "vanish" inside a top hat.

I used more cards from the mini deck I purchased as wine charms.

Added a little decoration to my everyday HOME sign.

Menu: Our appetizer was caprese skewers - tomato, mozzarella ball wrapped in a basil leaf, and then drizzled with balsamic and oil.  I called these Pick-a-Card Caprese with the intention of adding one of the mini cards to each skewer...as you can see in the photo, I got so busy I forgot to add the cards!

Our main dish was pulled pork sandwiches. I made the shredded pork in the crock pot, so I had less stress getting ready after getting home for work. I followed this recipe from Recipe Tin Eats for the rub and the cooking/browning portion. I skipped the homemade BBQ sauce and just used Sweet Baby Rays.  I purchase premade cole slaw to add and brioche buns. For a magic appropriate title, "Pulled from the Hat Pork - The Disappearing Swine!"

One side was green beans I baked in the oven.  Titled these "The Great Veggie-ni."

I also served baked mac and cheese. Since I taught all day and wouldn't get home from work until a couple hours before the party, I had to make these the easy way.  I found a recipe that used boxed mac and cheese that you cooked al dente and then just added breadcrumbs (I chose Panko breadcrumbs), Parmesan, and seasonings before baking it. The magic title for these was "Abraca-Delicious Mac and Cheese."

I had to pull a bunny from a hat somewhere in my menu, so of course it was dessert. We had bunny cupcakes with just the top of the head and ears showing. Simple to make with just a large marshmelow cut diagonally and then dipped in pink sugar.  The black cupcake wrappers were to help it look like a magician's hat.  The plan was to add a black card stock circle to the top of the wrapper to make it look like an upside down hat, but I ran out of time to get them cut.  We had a mini chocolate pretzel wand on the top for added fun.

Favor: Large pretzel rods dipped in chocolate to look like magic wands became my party favor.  I placed them in a bag of Trix cereal and called them Magic Trix!  I thanked my guests for "making the magic happen."

Everything about this dinner was magical - the friends, the food, and the fun details that all came together.  Hope you liked reading about the party!