49ers vs Swifties Super Bowl Party

I have been a 49er fan since I was little, and I am super excited about this Sunday's Super Bowl LVIII, but the achievements of these teams have been a bit overshadowed by the Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce media frenzy (my opinion of course).  Instead of getting bothered by it, I decided to embrace it and celebrate my team with a fun and silly 49ers vs Swifties dinner party!

Invitation: I decided to have a bit of fun with my invitation by incorporating an image I found of Swift photoshopped onto Kelce's body.  I used this and an image of Brock Purdy to show the rivalry.  I switched out the KC in the middle of the Chief's arrowhead with a TS for Taylor Swift.  Then I added a few of Swift's song titles into my text.

Decorations:  Both teams have red in their uniforms, and Taylor's album was called "Red," so that color became a big focus of the party.  I purchased a red shimmery backdrop from Amazon to put up behind my table.  I added white butcher paper behind it to cover the photo collage of my family.  I also purchased the football field tablecloth from Amazon.

For a centerpiece, I purchased 3 pieces of red glitter cardstock from Michaels to use like a table runner.  On this, I had a gold vase filled with red artificial flowers and gold tissue paper.  I designed images to put on skewers inside the vase and to use as photos props for pictures.

Also in the centerpiece was a football with some red heart shaped glasses to represent Taylor Swift.  I found these in the dollar bin at Target.  I borrowed the mini 49er helmet and the black 49er hat from my neighbor.  The wooden heart is a Valentine's decoration, but I added it to give more of a Taylor Swift vibe to the centerpiece.

The red plastic plates and smaller gold paper plates I purchased at Dollar Tree.  I then printed out logos for the 49ers and the Swifties and alternated the teams around the table.

The gold napkins I also purchased at Dollar Tree.  I made mini Swiftie friendship bracelets to wrap around the napkins.  These also served as place cards, and I put letter beads with the guest's initials on the bracelet.  If I were to host this party again, I would probably keep the napkin less folded and include the guest's entire name, but for my small group, the initials were fine.

For my beverage table, I lucked out by having close friends that have great memorabilia they let me borrow for the night. One friend went to a Taylor Swift concert, and let me borrow the boxes (on the mantle) and the giant envelopes (on the table) which show Taylor's Eras Tour.  I borrowed a 49er jersey from other friend.

Another friend let me borrow his football from the 2020 Super Bowl that is signed by all the players!

I had fun creating and designing my wine labels with a Taylor Swift vibe, but words that promoted a 49er win!  Used Taylor Swift's song "Blank Space" to represent zero points on the scoreboard for Kansas City.  

For wine charms, I printed out small logos and images I found online.  Things like an Eras Tour poster with Kelse instead of Swift, a Chiefs jersey with Swift as the name on the back,  red lips, etc.

Menu: This is a dinner, rather than snacks, so I needed to create a menu that was filling, but still fit with the theme.  I decided to highlight various star players on both teams & of course Taylor Swift.  We started with an appetizer of veggies and dip.  I called this BROCK-oli with more than PURDY good dip after the 49ers quarterback, Brock Purdy.

For the main dish, I had burgers with all the fixings: cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, bacon, and avocado.  I named these burgers after Taylor Swift's song "Back to December" calling them Back to Decem-BURGERS.  Also brought Travis Kelce from the Chief's in with the TRAVIS-ty of toppings.

You've gotta have fries with cheeseburgers, right?  Named these after the 49ers star running back Christian McCaffrey calling them McCaf-fries.

Deebo Samuel is another amazing player for the 49ers.  We had boneless honey buffalo wings I renamed DEEBO-ned Chicken Wings.

I couldn't decide between two ideas for dessert, so I decided to do mini versions of both.  One was mini red velvet cupcakes with buttercream frosting & edible sugar.  My friend who works at Small Cakes bakery (yummy stuff) made these for me, and I just added pennants I designed.  These were named after Taylor Swift's song, "Red".

The second dessert I served was a mini strawberry shake to represent Taylor Swift's song, (milk)"Shake It Off"!

Activity/Game:  I had fun coming up with this fill-in-the-blank game for the party.  I looked up some of Taylor Swift's most popular songs, and tried to incorporate them into Super Bowl sentences. My favorite is, Mahomes will definitely say, "I Knew You Were Trouble" after playing against the 49er defense!  As a 49er fan, these sentences were definitely bias to my team, but the guests got a kick out of it.

Favor:  Aren't these cookies so cute?  One of my neighbors offered to make Super Bowl/Taylor Swift themed cookies for me, and she did an amazing job! From footballs, to circles with SF, to castles with "Love Story" on them, they were perfect.  Yummy too!

As guest's departed, I also gave them this Super Bowl Bingo sheet Swiftie Edition to play during the game this Sunday.  I had fun making this and coming up with some of the things that were funny with the Taylor Swift obsession.  This card is definitely more geared to both teams.  I tried to be fair (for the most part).  You may catch my one addition that isn't equally represented!

This was such a fun party, and one you can totally throw together for this weekend's game.  GO NINERS!

Wigs & Wine Party

Looking for a little fun for your next party?  Then host a Wigs and Wine Party & see what your guest's come up with!  This was such a fun theme to host, and the girls and I were laughing at the variety of wigs each guest wore to the party.

Invite:  I designed the party invitation on PhotoShop.  Kept it simple with a few images with wigs and the party details.  I asked my guests to wear a wig (I provided the wine).  Make sure you send out the invite with enough time for guests to get a wig if they don't have one already.

Check out some of our fun wigs!

Decorations: Due to our family Halloween costumes through the years, I have several wigs that I used to decorate the table.  Everything from Princess Lea, to the charcters of Inside Out, to a normal ombre wig.  I purchased styrofoam heads from Michaels Craft Store and placed them on the table with the various wigs I already owned as the centerpiece.  A piece of cardstock under each head brought in the colors of the invitation.

In coming up with ideas for this theme, I looked up various hair styles that are often made into wigs.  I tried to incorporate some of these into the food and decor for the party.  On top of each napkin I created a card having fun with the "pixie" style of wig.  The message was "I WIG always PIX you!"  Only problem with this was, after I created the tag, I discovered that the company that makes Pixie Sticks no longer sells them!  They are discontinued!!  I decided to make them myself.  I got a paper straw and hot glued one end.  Then I mixed a half a cup of sugar with one packet or Kool-Aid mix. I poured it into the straw and hot glued the other end.  Done (and tasty too).

I usually have place cards set on my table with my monthly dinners, but this time, I decided to let the guests design their own place card and choose their spot at the table.  I bought 4" wooden circles from Michaels, painted them a generic skin color, and drew on eyes and lips.  I purchased play dough from the Dollar Tree for guests to craft their own wig on top.  

Some of the guests matched their play dough creation to the wig they were wearing at the party.  Others created just a fun wig for their wooden piece.

I designed my wine labels playing with the word WIG.  For the red wine, it was "Care for a S-WIG of red wine?" and the white wine read, "Wiggin' Out?  Let your hair down and have some white wine."  I designed this second label to have a white wine glass with a wig on it.

For wine charms, I printed out the same wig images I used on the invitation plus other matching images. I used my Cricut machine to cut these out.

Menu: We started the meal with a 7-layer salad which was delicious and fairly easy to make.  I made it the morning of the party before I went to work, so it was one less thing to worry about.  To fit with the wig theme, I called this the "layered" salad with an image of a layered wig.  I followed this recipe, but I switched out the celery and green onions and swapped in orange bell pepper to substitute.  I wasn't sure if my guests would be okay with all of these ingredients, but it was very popular.

For the main dish, I served Garlic Herb Spaghetti with Baked Chicken Meatballs.  The only substitution I made to this recipe was to serve it with angel hair pasta instead of spaghetti.  I switched this to match with the theme: "angel hair" pasta and "mullet" meatballs.  This was very good, and I would definitely make it again with spaghetti or any type of pasta.

Along with the pasta, I made a Garlic and Herb bread that was "braided" to match with the theme.  I followed this recipe. The bread was tasty, and if you are willing to make bread from scratch, this recipe was not too difficult.

For dessert, I made a chocolate fondue with fruit, pound cake, and Nilla Wafers.  I used one of the styrofoam heads and used a Sharpie to add punk makeup to it.  Then I used skewers with fruit on them to push into the head like a Mohawk.  It looked so good and definitely added some decor to the festive party.

Favor: I played off the "beehive" wig for my party favor and gave guest's a Burt's Bees lip balm.  I created a tag that read, "Even if we all lose our hair...Our friendship WIG always be BEE-utiful!

This was a really fun theme and it was so great to have this fun WIG my close friends! Totally recommend you try this theme for a future party!

Home Alone Christmas

It's the holiday season, and one of my kids' favorite holiday movies is Home Alone.  It is part of our family traditions to watch this movie together each year.  It made for a fun theme for my monthly dinner this December as well.

Invite: I found some Home Alone images online that I incorporated into the invitation.  These included the stack of Little Nero's Pizza boxes, the movie logo, and the pizza can.

Decorations: There are so many fun ideas for decorations that go with this movie.  You could boobytrap your home with obstacles for guests to weave through!  For my decorations, I kept it simple with just table and some other decor.  I set the table with a red tablecloth & a centerpiece with some of the Battle Plan hazards from the movie.

I covered a small paint can with black construction paper and added the word tar on the front.  I set this on top of piece of black sandpaper with the largest nail I could find sticking out the top for the part of the movie where Marv walks up the tar stairs and brings his foot down on the huge nail.

I purchased large paint cans and used my Cricut cutter to cut out paint drips in a few colors.  Even empty, these were a bit too heavy to hang from the ceiling, but I did attach them to the ceiling above the dining table.  These represented when Harry and Marv are clocked by the swinging paint cans in the movie.

Next on the table was a VHS movie of "Angels with Filthy Souls."  I printed out the labels from images online, and attached them to an old VHS of a different movie.  In front of the VHS, I had a crowbar and a BB gun like Kevin and Marv use in the film as wells hot wheels cars.

One of my favorite scenes in the movie is when Harry walks through the door into saran wrap covered in glue and then Kevin turns on a fan which covers him in white feathers! To incorporate this scene into my table, I added a box of saran wrap, a mini fan, and put some white feathers in the fan.

Another favorite scene is when Marv goes to turn on the light in the basement and an iron comes down the laundry shoot to smack him in the face. Hence...an iron as part of the centerpiece.

Lastly, I added a photo of Buzz's girlfriend with Kevin's famous line from the movie, "Buzz' girlfiend, Woof!"

For placecards, I printed out Kevin's mom's photo from when she realizes they forgot Kevin at home, and instead of her screaming out "Kevin!" I replaced it with each guest's name.

As a napkin ring/decoration, I put a box of Tic Tacs and created a ring with the line from the movie when the smoking Santa has run out of candycanes and gives Kevin two Tic Tacs instead saying, "There you go. Don't Spoil your dinner."

My daughter also drew out the Battle Plan from the movie on a piece of foam board that I used over the drink table.  I would traced it, but she's so talented she did it all by hand!

Just for fun, I also put a photo of Marv's face coming through the dog door on my wall.  I put some hot wheels in front it - another one of Kevin's hazards.

On my front door, I put a paper electric BBQ starter like Kevin uses in the movie to heat up his door handle.  I don't have a real one, so I just used scrapbook paper.

Coming up with sayings to put my wine bottles is always fun.  For my red wine, I decided to use the famous line from the movie during the battle when Kevin asks, "You guys give up or ya thirsty for more?"  I simply added "red wine" to the end of this phrase!  For the white wine, I played off the part in the movie where Kevin thinks he made his family disappear and then challenged the guests to make the white wine disappear.  I also served a rose wine.  For this label, I used the lines from when Kevin's mom calls the police station and talks to Rose, then gets transferred to another cop, then this cop sends the call back to Rose saying, "Rose, hyper on 2."

For wine charms, I cut out iconic people or items from the movie.  Some of my favorites were the Michael Jordan cutout used to fool the robbers, the "Kenosha Kickers" jacket that John Candy wore with is polka band, a bottle of Brut aftershave for the famous "AAAHHH scene," and a toothbrush "approved by the American Dental Association." 

Menu: I wanted to incorporate Buzz's tarantula from the movie into the evening somewhere, and I didn't think I could handle having even a fake one on my table while we ate, so I decided to incorporate it into my menu. I made mini tostada boats and cut olives to look like spiders.  The boats were simple with refried beans, taco seasoned meat, cheese, tomatoes, and lettuce, sour cream was piped on to look like a spider web, and then the spider olives went on top of that. 

For a main dish, we of course had pizza as Kevin orders "a lovely cheese pizza just for me" in the movie after he doesn't get any of the pizza when the whole family is there.  I went to my local pizza joint, and purchased a pizza box.  Then I covered the top with white posterboard and created a Little Nero's Pizza logo to put on the top.  I made a pizza, but cheated a bit by adding pepperoni and mushrooms after asking the guests their topping preferences.

I also served a caesar salad. I took the line from the movie when Kevin's sisters taunts him with, "You are what the French call les incompetents" and just replaced the last two words with la salad Cesar (cesar salad in French).

Right before the robbers invade the McCallister home in the movie, Kevin makes himself a microwavable Mac and Cheese dinner.  I incorporated this into my menu by making macaroni and cheese cups in muffin tins.

For dessert, we had Rubbish Ice Cream sundaes.  A small ice cream sundae bar with toppings.

Favor: I was pressed for time and needed an easy parting favor for guests.  I purchased cans of Pepsi and red striped straws.  My tag read, "Fuller! Go easy on the Pepsi!" to go with that line from the movie when Fuller's parents are trying to limit his soda intake.

This was a fun night with my girlfriends.  I did purchase or borrow a few things to make the decor happen, but most of it I had around my house (like Kevin did).  This kept my costs for decor low.  I would totally recommend this theme for a holiday movie night or dinner with friends.