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!

Painting Party

My girlfriends and I have gotten together recently to paint canvases together, so when I was stuck on a monthly dinner theme for this month, one of my friends suggested a Painting Party.  With only a day and half to prep for this dinner, I immediately got working.  I wanted to make sure I didn't repeat ideas from my daughter's art themed birthday party (see post here), so I tried to come up with all new ideas.

Invite:  I had a bit of a challenge with the wording of my invite because we weren't actually going to paint at this painting party!  I decided on the phrase, "Come wet your palette" since this was specifically a dinner party.

Decor:  I set up an easel outside with a canvas I painted with the title of our party (sorry, no photo). Inside I used a white tablecloth, colorful plates, mason jars, and various other paint inspired items.  I cut paint splatters out of colorful card stock and set them in between the centerpieces.

My main centerpiece was a vase I made using paintbrushes and a bouquet of colorful flowers.  I bought the vase at the Dollar Tree and the brushes at Michaels.  I painted the wooden handles to add a pop of color and hot glued them to the vase. 

I also bought mini paint cans at Lowes and filled them with paintbrushes and sponges. I cut card stock to look like paint on the can.  From the ceiling and on my side table, I strung rainbow circle garlands made of felt and stitched together.

On a side table I set these wooden drawing figures.  I borrowed these from the art teacher at school.

To hold the silverware, I cut slits in paint swatches from Home Depot (the ones at Lowes were not big enough).  Simple and FREE!

As place cards, I bought mini canvases and easels from a local art store.  On each canvas I painted wooden alphabet letters that matched the first initial of each guest. I thought about having the girls paint these canvases as they waited for the food to be ready, but decided against it in favor of just letting the guests relax and chat.

I created painting themed wine labels on Photo Shop calling the wine "Creative Juices."  I put a red paintbrush on the red wine label and a gold one on the chardonnay.

Menu: I like my menu to match the theme as well, but this was a challenge with this theme.  At first, I thought about finding famous paintings with food in them and crafting my menu that way.  I decided instead to focus on colors and the artist's palette.

I started with a green salad with colorful veggies...red tomatoes, orange peppers, yellow corn, green cucumbers, and purple cabbage.

The main course was homemade pizza.  I shaped the dough and placed the toppings in ramekins to look like an artist's palette. I did two big pizzas, but you could do individual pizzas if you have room in your oven to cook them all.  I made my dough from scratch, but you could use a store-bought dough.

For dessert, I made cake pops and placed them on plastic palettes I purchased at an art supply store. I made 4 cake pops for each guest. I had these set out on my wine/favor table, so it also added themed decor to the party.

Favor:  I created a fun tag using the phrase "Thank HUE from the bottom of my heART".  I designed it in PhotoShop and adhered it to swatches from Lowes. I didn't have time to order a paint brush cookie cutter online and the local cake shops didn't have one, so I ended up free handing the cookie using a image from Google as a template. I used a toothpick to create the lines on the grey frosting of the brush to make it look more like a paintbrush.

The Painting Party was another great time with friends.  It makes me anticipate the next time we get together to actually paint.

 If you like any of these ideas, please comment below!  Would love to hear from my readers.  If you would like any of the templates, let me know.

Seven Dwarfs Dinner

I just hosted my 84th monthly dinner last night!! For 7 years, I have hosted these themed dinners for my friends.  It is hard to believe as time flies so quickly.  In honor of 7 years of dinners, I wanted to theme my dinner around the number 7.  After tossing around several ideas, I decided on the Seven Dwarfs as my theme.  This would be great for a little girl's birthday party too.  The details were neat. Check them out...

Invite: I am just learning PhotoShop, but I used it to make this simple invite.  There are a lot of cute invitation ideas out there, but I found most were focused on Snow White.  I wanted the focus of mine to be on the Seven Dwarfs.

Entry Decor:  Lucky for me, I have a great husband who always says "yes" to helping me with my crazy ideas.  I asked him if he could easily build me a mining entrance, and he went to work on it.

I borrowed these stuffed dwarfs from a fellow teacher which I used to decorate the entrance. I made the Heigh Ho signs out of cut logs. I also played the Heigh Ho song from the movie at the party entrance.

Decor:  I set the table with a yellow tablecloth, red plates, and blue napkins.  I platter of red apples was my centerpiece (and dessert), and then I lined the center of the table with mining cars and statues of the seven dwarfs.  The red "mining carts" I bought at the Dollar Tree five for a dollar.  I cut black circles out of scrapbook paper to use as wheels, and then elevated them from the table using wine corks.  I also used origami paper to make paper diamonds to set out near and inside the mining carts.

I made napkin ring holders to look like the Snow White Mirror using a Google image for the inside of the mirror and the Cricut cartridge "Happily Ever After" which had the frame. The menu was designed using a Google image that I Photoshopped out the middle to add my text.

For my place cards, I made apple cupcakes. These are really simple. I placed a plain donut on top of the cupcake before frosting it, then covered it in red icing and red sprinkles!  The stem is a Tootsie Pop cut in half and the green leaf I piped on with frosting. I made Heigh Ho flags with a dwarf on them for each guest.

I made wine charms with images of each dwarf and designed a red and a white wine label.

Menu:  I wanted to serve mini seven dwarf-related food, but not have my guests leave hungry.  For this reason, I chose to have 3 "main" dishes.  The first dish was mini wieners that I placed on cut skewers and called "Mini Meat Pickaxes". The second dish was ground beef turnovers that I shaped into diamonds, and the third dish was "Dwarf Skewers" which was just grilled chicken cut and put on toothpicks.  I served petite peas and mini carrots as my vegetable.

I also made mining carts filled with Jell-O "jewels".  I used baby food containers with scrapbook paper to create the wheels and filled them with 4 colors of Jell-O Jigglers.

Dessert: For dessert, we had a caramel apple dipping station. I used the apples from the centerpiece and cut them fresh as guests were ready.  The caramel, Oreo crumbles, nuts, coconut, and mini chocolate chips were in each "mining cart" along the table.  The sign near the toppings instructed guests to "Pick Your Poison."

Favor:  I wanted to incorporate each dwarf into the favor, so I decide to make a funny Seven Dwarfs

Survival Kit for each guest. Coming up with some of the items (and trying to keep it inexpensive) was difficult, but I did it.  The shot of Vodka to help Bashful gain confidence was the girls' favorite!
I bought the items at the Dollar Tree (eye mask, tissues, dum dums), Party City (paddles), Ralphs (sour candy, Skittles, airheads), Total Wine (vodka), and Bare Minerals (gave me the sample concealer).  Here is the prescription label I made for Doc:

This was another great dinner to add to so many other great dinners. I just love hosting these parties for my friends, and I cannot wait for another year of memories created with these amazing woman!

And of my course my daughter loved dressing up for the occasion too!

Cops and Robbers Party

Who knew that even adults love to play Cops & Robbers?!  We sure do, and my latest monthly dinner with the girls proves it. All came dressed up, and all came with a playful attitude ready to "steal" away some fun!

Invite: I tried to use some police lingo in the invite to make it interesting, but otherwise, just a simple invitation made with Microsoft Word.  As part of the fun, I asked guests to come dressed as either a cop or a robber.  The girls were very clever in what they came up with and we had fun posing in front of the paper line up background I made....

Decor:  I didn't find too many ideas for this type of party on the internet, so I was left to my own creativity (which I love!).  There were so many ideas that came into my mind, I couldn't wait to put them into action!  It all started with the entry decor...

I put Police Line Do Not Cross tape on my front door and made a sign to identify our house as the "police station".  I included entry requirements, and each guest completed these Booking Station requirements before entering.  Under the sign, was a ribbon with mini clothes pins for guests to place their fingerprint cards.  I designed the badge on PhotoShop and used my Cricut cartridge to make the police cars and lettering on the sign.

Mug Shots! Yes, I know it's cheesy, but Mug Root Beer shots was the idea that truly inspired the whole Cops & Robbers theme for me, so I couldn't leave it out!  Guests took their "Mug Shot" before entering.  The red light I bought for $10 off Amazon.

The second requirement for entry was the fingerprint station. I made simple cards with funny aliases for each guest (Robin Banks, M.T. Vault, Patty Larceny, etc.).  I used a normal stamp pad and set out some baby wipes in a pencil box for guests to "wipe away their crimes" after providing fingerprints.  Guests attached their cards to the entry sign after completion which added to the decor.

After guests entered, they passed through my doorway "jail" made with paper streamers.  I taped half the streamers down on top and bottom and left the other half loose so guests could walk through.

Table Decor: I bought a white plastic tablecloth and used black duct tape to make striped lines to continue with the jail/cop theme. I wanted to tie both cops and robbers into my centerpiece as well, so I bought a dozen donuts to arrange on a cake platter and made money bags to go on each side.  The burlap bags I bought at Michaels, then spray painted the money sign on the front. I filled each bag with gold tissue paper and a can of soda for weight and then topped them with chocolate gold coins. I also bought ring pops, but I didn't like how they looked so I left these out.

I tried Photoshop for the first time EVER in making these mug shot place cards...LOVE THEM!  It was a bit of a challenge finding "non-smiling" photos of each girl and then trying to edit them for this project, but I did it.  The above are some of my favorites.

For wine charms, I made half the guests police car charms and the other half money bag charms.  Both were made using my Cricut.

To hold the forks, I made holsters out of black card stock and buttons.  I folded a grey napkin to stick out like a gun.

Menu:  I made the menu card like a police report.  It was fun coming up with even more silly officer names and then of course deciding on a menu that I could tweak to fit the theme.

We started with a normal salad that I called Tossed (in Jail) Salad.

For the main dish, I served chicken, peppers, and mushroom kabobs on sticks.  I called them "Stick 'em Up" Kabobs with Pepper Spray. I also bought wheat pizza dough and shaped the dough into handcuffs.

For dessert, I served Prison Striped Pudding with a police badge cookie on top.  The pudding is just boxed chocolate pudding alternating with whipped cream.  I couldn't find a police badge shaped cookie cutter anywhere, but I found a pretend police badge at Dollar Tree.  I set the badge on the dough and used a knife to cut around it to create each badge.

Favor:  I bought mini chocolate and powdered donuts and wrapped them in cellophane bags as my favor.  Just a little "loot" for the girls to take home.  I had two different tags.

We had an amazing time dressing up and playing our parts.  This was a great theme for a party gathering, and I totally recommend it.  Would love to hear your thoughts and comments!!