New Year, Old FRIENDS

Watching episodes of Friends on television always makes me laugh.  I just love the silly conversations and the quirky friendships on that show.  For my first monthly dinner of 2017 I decided to make Friends my theme.  It was an "New Year, Old FRIENDS" theme, but this would be a great theme for a birthday party, wedding, shower...you name it!

Invite:  I designed my invite with the purple door and gold frame from the show.  I utilized the same font as the show with the signature dots in between the letters.  The font is called Gabriel Weiss' Friends Font and you can download it here.

Entry:  I attempted to create the same purple door and frame on my front door.  I bought a lavender tablecloth and wrapped it around my door.  I created the frame with bright yellow poster board and markers.  I incorporated Joey Tribbiani's famous pick up line "How you doin'?" which I cut out using my Cricut machine.

Decor:  Since the Central Perk coffee shop is such a prominent setting in the Friends episodes, I wanted to try to incorporate it into the decor of the party. I also incorporated famous lines/symbols from the characters throughout.

I looked online and called around the various craft stores, but I couldn't find a huge coffee cup in my price range.  I randomly stopped at Ross two days before the party and found this one (and for only $5!)  I painted it black and printed the Central Perk logo onto printable vinyl that I then cut out and attached to the front of the mug. I filled the mug with a foam piece and then a layer of coffee beans on the top.

I made some photo props to represent some of the most famous episodes/lines from Friends that I stuck into my centerpiece coffee mug.  I also borrowed the complete season of DVDs from a friend to use as decor on my table.

I made my plates and napkins representative of the Friends door.  I cut the napkins like the yellow frame making sure to leave the folded side of the napkin uncut at parts so it would stay together.  On top of each napkin I added a mini KitKat bar with the famous Ross quote, "We were on a Break!"

For place cards, I superimposed my guest's face onto the face of a Friends character in a popular scene from the show.  I purposely did not do a "perfect" match because I thought that made it even funnier.  These are just a few of the examples.

As part of each place setting, I added a roll of Mentos along with the Joey's quote about being a "Mento" (mentor) for young kids.

A look at the entire place setting.

I set up a side table with drinks and an appetizer.

I made this sign out of foam board and card stock using my Cricut to cut the letters.

Instead of wine glasses, I decided to use coffee cups.  I bought mugs from the dollar store, and printed the Central Perk logo on vinyl.  I cut out the logo and adhered it to the coffee mug.  If you use waterproof Mod Podge, it will stay through washings. For wine charms, I made tags of the characters on Friends.  I even included characters like "Princess Consuela Banana Hammock" and "Miss Chanandler Bong" which gave my guests a fun laugh!

The wine labels I created on PhotoShop.

Menu:  Again, I tried to incorporate different scenes/well-known lines from Friends into my menu.  I started with a cheese and crackers appetizer. 

I bought a cow cookie cutter from the local cake shop for my cheese.  "Moo cows" as my 3-year old called them.  This was Joey's "moo point" a.k.a moot point.

I served lobster bisque with a bread stick cut to be a lobster.  This goes with the episode where Ross compares his connection to Rachel to lobsters that mate for life.  The bisque was good, and I received many compliments from the guests.  The lobster cookie cutter I bought at the same cake shop as the cow one.  I made the breadsticks out of pita bread that I then spread melted butter and Italian seasonings on. I baked them in a 375 oven for a little over 5 minutes.  Aren't they cute?

For the main dish, I made a shepherd's pie, and then layered it in a trifle bowl to represent Rachel's English Trifle.  In the episode, the pages of Rachel's recipe book stick together so her trifle is half meat/main dish and half dessert!  Even though Joey loves it in the episode, I decided to keep mine as just the shepherd's pie.

For dessert, I made a super-easy Coffee Cheesecake.  I knew I wanted to do some type of coffee-related dessert to pull in Central Perk again, but then I remembered the cheesecake episode of Friends where Rachel and Chandler love the cheesecake so much they eat it off the floor after accidentally dropping it.  Sometimes coffee-flavored items are too overpowering for me, but this Kraft recipe was delicious.  Just the right touch of coffee flavor.

Favor:  I decided to make personalized notepads for my take-home gift.  I designed the layout on Photoshop with the dimensions of 4.25 x 5.5 so that I could fit 4 on an 8.5x11 paper.  I printed out the copies, cut them using my paper cutter so they were all the exact same size, added a heavy piece of card stock to the back, and then glued the top together with Elmer's glue to make a spine. Make sure you use a vice of some sort to hold all the papers together tightly when you glue them, and leave it until the glue has completely dried.  I left mine overnight just in case.

My notepads were 50 pages each (every page has this design), and I thought that was the perfect amount of pages.

Next to the notepads, I had this sign.  It tied in my reason for giving a NOTEpad, but also let my girls know I'm Glad We're Friends.

Just love spending one dinner a month with these ladies.  Sickness and life's commitments prevented all 10 of us from being able to make it to this particular dinner, but the 7 of us FRIENDS who made it sure had a nice time.  Thanks for being "there for me" ladies!

Emoji Party Time

Emojis are all the craze right now, so I decided to have some fun with them as my Monthly Dinner theme for November.  There are lots of ideas out there on the internet, but I always like to come up with my own.  Check out my party ideas and let me know what you liked!

Invite:  I tried to pull in as many emojis as I could on my invitation. I love the date, time, place emojis that are perfect for an invitation.  I did Photoshop the date emoji to be the date of my party instead of the generic emoji.  I didn't want to confuse my guests with two different dates.

Entry Decor:  I found emoji pillows at Michaels Craft Store to set out, and I bought happy face emoji balloons at the dollar store.The place most adults use emojis is in text messages, so I decided to make my entry sign look like an iphone with a string of text messages.

I designed the speech bubbles and "texts" on Photoshop and then just printed them out and pasted them to foam board. I added some black card stock to make the rim of the phone and drew in the other phone features.

I went with bright yellow and black for my color scheme, so I set my table with a black tablecloth.  For my centerpiece, I bought sunflowers from the grocery store, and simply placed emoji faces I had printed out on card stock on the face of each flower. I placed emoji pillows around the vase.

I borrowed other emoji decor from a student including this "poop" hat!  It was a silly addition that I placed on a cake platter.

I made emoji faces on yellow salad plates for each place setting.  I cut some of these out with my Cricut cutting machine, but most of them I just did my hand.  These would also be fun to string together as a party banner.  I only had time to make one set, so I did not do the banner, but it would have been fun.

I cut out small emoji faces to glue to bright yellow folded napkins.  All the emojis for the party I found online.  Just a warning though, sometimes it was difficult to find large size emojis that weren't pixilated. Just  make sure you check them before you print.  Here's a photo of the entire place setting...

For place cards, I decided to use 3 emojis that represented each individual guest.

It was fun to see the girls trying to figure out which place was theirs.  It was surprisingly easy for them.  The top one pictured here is my girlfriend to does makeup for Knott's Halloween Haunt, is a pastry chef, and is amazing with makeup.  The bottom is mine - I sell jewelry, love popcorn, and teach high school English.

Here's the one I made for my friend's baby who was a special guest for the evening! Pretty accurate right, moms?

My wine charms were emojis as well.  Printed them small, and then tied them to the wine stem with bright yellow ribbon.

I designed my wine bottle labels on Photoshop using an equation of the red color emoji + the glass of wine followed by the = sign.  I did the same equation with the white wine.  It was fun adding some emoji faces and messages onto the borders of the labels as well.

Menu:  In trying to come up with a theme-related menu, I decided to use some of the emotions related to emoji faces.  I started with a green salad I called "Greedy for Green Salad" so I could use the "money" emoji. I used a small round cookie cutter to cut the circular face of the cheese emoji and then used a straw to cut out the eyes.  I used a pairing knife to cut out the mouth.  I cut broccoli, tomatoes, and yellow pepper to put on the salad  with the cheese and romaine.

For the main dish, I served a Sweet and Spicy Chicken I made in the crock pot.  I used some emojis related to spicy - fire, heated face, and the tongue.  This wasn't super spicy which was good for me because I am a whimp when it comes to spicy.

Crockpot Sweet & Spicy Chicken

2 lbs. chicken breasts

1/3 cup honey

1/3 cup soy sauce (or coconut aminos)

1 tbls chili garlic sauce

1/2 tsp sea salt

1/2 tsp black pepper

Sesame seeds for garnish

Place chicken in the crock pot.  Mix remaining ingredients and pour over chicken.  Cook on low for 4 hours.  Then remove chicken and pour sauce into a pan. Simmer for 20 minutes until sauce has reduced to 1/4 the amount.  Pour sauce over chicken and sprinkle with sesame seeds.

I made Manhatma yellow rice and shaped it into circles.  I freehand cut red hearts out of red pepper to use as eyes.  This was to go along with the "loved" emoji face.

I sauteed green beans and cut butter to look like the "oh" emoji. I again used a straw to cut out the eyes and the open mouth.  The straw worked well because I just kept cutting the end off instead of worrying about trying to take the cut butter out of the straw.

For dessert, I wanted to make Death by Chocolate to represent the "dead" emoji.  I adapted the recipe to make it single-serving in martini glasses.  I simply layered brownie pieces, instant chocolate pudding, whipped cream, and a chopped up Score bar.  Then repeated that order one more time.  I topped each martini glass with a "dead" emoji face.  I used chocolate melts for the yellow circle and black features.  The black face I drew on with a toothpick.

Favor:  I found yellow cups at the dollar store and filled them with Hershey kisses and hugs. I printed out the "blowing a kiss" emoji to glue to the front and then designed a tag.

We had a super ......

 

                                                                         time! I just

these girls!

Hope you enjoyed reading about the Emoji Party!