My Favorite Things

This past Monday, I hosted a My Favorite Things party designed around The Sound of Music. I took the lyrics of the song and tried to incorporate them into as many of the party details as possible.  We had a great time and food was yummy!  This would be such a cute theme for a birthday party or any gathering with a gift exchange.

Invite:  I designed the invite on PhotoShop using an image of Julie Andrews I found on Google.  I asked each guest to try to wear white with blue ribbons to match the lyrics of the song.  For the gift exchange, each guest was asked to purchase 3 of their favorite item.  I set a low price limit so it didn't get too crazy.

Entry Decor:  For my entry door, I made a giant door covering and attempted to make it look like the mountains/poppy fields from The Sound of Music.  I cut up tissue paper and construction paper for all parts of it.  My kiddos were excited to help make the cotton ball clouds.

Table Decor: I set the table with a white tablecloth and yellow napkins.  As a centerpiece, I placed items from the first verse of "My Favorite Things".  This included roses from my garden that I sprinkled water on to look like raindrops, a kitten stuffed animal that had whiskers, a copper kettle, mittens, and a brown paper package.  I didn't have a copper kettle and they were SUPER expensive online, so I just found a white kettle from Goodwill and then sprayed it with copper spray paint.  I included a card with the verse on it in case guests didn't know the song.  I borrowed a black wooden music note from my dad to add to the centerpiece.  I also included a few items from the second verse of the song.  I hung snowflakes from the ceiling and placed sleigh bells down the center of the table.

I had a hard time deciding what to do for a place card, but I finally decided on taking the movie poster and replacing Julie Andrews' face with each of my guest's. As I am not an expert at Photoshop, so some of them were pretty funny with the facial color vs. neck color.  It made for some good laughs.

To hold the silverware, I made blue mittens out of felt and yarn.  Easy to make and great for a winter party.

I designed simple wine labels to go with the theme..."one" of my favorite things and "another one" of my favorite things!  The sheet music of "My Favorite Things" and the glasses were images I found online.

For wine charms, I pulled out the various items mentioned in the song, and found images of each online. Not super creative, but the best I could do in my last minute efforts.

Menu: The song only mentions two specific food items, but I wanted to include a green salad with the dinner. I kept looking at the lyrics to see what I could adapt to go in a green salad, and I came up with snowflakes cut out of cheese.  I bought a mini snowflake cookie cutter at a local cake shop and sliced Monterrey Jack cheese thin enough to use.  The salad also had tomatoes, cucumber, croutons, and walnuts.

For the main dish, I served Schnitzel with Noodles. I had never made this before, but it was delicious especially with the lemon juice. There are recipes for both chicken and pork.  I think one is Austrian and one is German?  I choose to use boneless pork chops.  The noodles are just egg noodles that I then added butter, garlic, and peas. This is a delicious dish, and it of course is mentioned in the song.  Just keep in mind that it is prepared on the stove top right before serving.  It can't be made ahead or it will get soggy.

For dessert, I served the other food item mentioned in the song, warm apple strudels.  Again, this is a dish you have to put together during the party in order for it be warm and not mushy. I made the filling before the party started, but I had to do the puff pastry and the baking right before serving.  The recipe I used for this I found here. I chose this recipe because it looked easy and because it didn't have raisins.  Many of the strudel recipes I found had raisins, and I am not a big fan of cooked raisins, so I avoided those.  That may make it not "authentic Austrian", but to me it made it "edible"!

Party Activity:  The super fun aspect of this monthly dinner was the My Favorite Things gift exchange.  On the invitation, I asked guests to purchase 3 of their favorite item to bring to the party.  For example, one of my favorite movies is Pride and Prejudice and I am a popcorn and Gobstopper junkie, so I put together 3 of these packages.  We put all the guest's names in a pot and each guest drew three names, talked about their favorite thing, and then gave the 3 guests whatever it was.  Some of the items people brought were Starbucks cards, the ingredients to make a Moscow Mule drink, comfy socks, a favorite necklace, etc.

To take their goodies home in, I made these favors bags with another verse from the song.

We had a lot of fun at this party, and I am excited to enjoy/try out the goodies I got in the gift exchange.

Totally 80's Party

This past Monday, marked 8 years of continuous monthly dinners for the girls and I.  It is crazy to think that I have hosted  96 different dinner themes over the years! Time has flown by, and I love the friendships that have been strengthened over these past 8 years.  I wanted this month's dinner theme to tie in with the 8 idea.  I ended up deciding on a Totally 80's party!

Invite:  I tried to pull in as many 80's references on my invite as possible.  I looked up a list of the top 100 80's songs to find some song titles that could go with what I wanted to say.  I also used some popular sayings of the 80's.  It was fun to create.  Inviting your guests to dress up is essential to any 80s party...what a fun decade for clothing!

Entry Decor:  I made this Lite Brite inspired sign for the entry.  It is a piece of black foam board that I made a frame around with card stock.  The logo letters are also cut from card stock.  Then I just poked colored Christmas lights through the foam board to spell out "hello" and plugged it in.  My plan was also to put down a yellow slip 'n' slide leading up to the front door, but I couldn't find one at Goodwill, so I had to forgo that.

Inside decor:  I made this giant Pacman backdrop with a black plastic tablecloth, blue painter's tape, and dot/figures cut out of card stock.  It was easy to put together and made a great photo backdrop.

For centerpieces on the table, I bought colorful Slinkies from the Dollar Tree.  I also made a giant Rubik cube out of a box and card stock.  I glued the card stock and then used black electrical tape (sliced into thinner strips) for the black lines.  As you can see in the photo, some of the tape didn't stick that well.  If you create this, you may want to glue it down to avoid falling tape.

On my serving table, I also put out some of my old toys from the 80's.  I decorated with the Cabbage Patch Dolls and My Little Ponies that my daughter now plays with. My husband has old Atari joysticks and a Space Invaders game that I set out.

I made Pacman plates using yellow and black paper plates. I simply cut a wedge out of a black plate and glued it to the yellow plate.  I added a black eyeball cut from card stock.  I found My Little Pony napkins at Party City.

For place cards, I used Garbage Pail Kids images.  I found each of my guest's names and printed out the image. I did not order the actual cards.  It wasn't worth the money for me, and I couldn't get all the names of my guests.  For those guests that I could not find Garbage Pail Kid cards for, I found ones that I could just change the name on Photoshop (example Martian Mary changed to Martian Maria).

Drinks:  For each of my menu items, I pulled in movie quotes/concepts from popular 80's movies.  I always serve wine at these parties, but I wanted to serve a fun cocktail as well. I decided on making a watermelon cocktail to go with the famous line from the Dirty Dancing movie, "I carried a watermelon." .

I found the recipe on The Taylor House for this drink.  It was tasty, but not sweet enough for my taste. I liked the idea though.

For wine charms, I used images of neon cassette tapes, and I added each guest's name.

I made wine labels using two popular songs from the 80's.  I found the cassette covers of Billy Idol's "White Wedding" for my chardonnay, and UB40's "Red Red Wine" for my Cabernet.

Menu:  We started with a Footloose and fancy free spinach salad with Kevin Bacon dressing.  I made this salad with spinach, hard boiled eggs, bacon, and red onion.  The dressing was made with the bacon grease, red wine vinegar, Dijon mustard, sugar, salt, and pepper.  It was yummy!

I served chicken as my main dish to represent the quote from Back to the Future, "What you are McFly, Chicken?"  This is an easy chicken recipe I make all the time.  Nothing special, but always a big hit.

The side dishes were green peppers cut to resemble light sabers from Star Wars and mashed potatoes with pepper eyes to represent Ghostbusters.

For dessert, I served Strawberry Shortcakes.  Simple and easy.

Favor:  I decided to make cake pop joysticks as favors for the guests. I bought a 2x4 at Home Depot and cut it into squares.  I painted each square black and drilled a hole large enough to fit my lollipop stick.  The red button is cut from card stock and adhered with double-sided sticky foam so that it was elevated a little bit.

I designed a Game Over tag on Photoshop to attach to the joysticks.

We had a great time at this party celebrating 8 years of Monthly Dinners. Hope you enjoyed these ideas, and you are inspired to host your own 80's party.  It was radical!

Spin on Salads Party

When trying to come up with a creative spirit week for my ASB Leadership students at work, I gave them the idea of salad dressings as dress up days.  I created this classroom flyer to display the idea..

My students loved the idea, and I decided to make it my monthly dinner theme as well. On top of the dress up fun, a salad menu is always a perfect way to end summer, so this theme fit perfectly.

Invite: I designed the invite on Photo Shop changing the Ranch bottle to reflect my party details.  I included the dress up examples at the bottom to let my guests know exactly what I was asking them to wear to the party. If I were to make this invite again, I might have put these details on the back just to lessen the amount of words on the front.

Entry Decor:  I made this entry sign out of card stock and foam board.  The label I again edited in Photo Shop.  The "green salad" my 3 and 5 year old helped me make by cutting light and dark green tissue paper into pieces and crumpling it. We also added some yellow cheese shavings by cutting card stock.

Inside Decor: I stayed fairly simple (at least simple for me) with my decorations for this party. I set my table with a light green tablecloth, white plates, and dark green napkins. For my centerpiece, my kids and I created another tissue paper salad. For this one, I added red tomatoes out of scrapbook paper.

Also as part of the centerpiece, I made these vegetable vases and candle holders.  For the candle holder, I just removed the stem of the red pepper and fit the tea light candle on top.  You may have to shave some of the bottom of the pepper to make sure it stands up without tipping.  the vases are just red cabbage that I stuck skewers of vegetable flowers into.  Red, yellow, and orange peppers were cut to look like tulips and a mushroom was placed in the middle.  Flower radishes rounded out the look.  To cover the skewers, I used green onion!

My favorite idea I had for this party was to make the place cards look like mini salad dressing bottles.  I used travel-size nail polish remover bottles that I found at CVS.  I created the main label and the label on the lid with an image I found on Google and edited with Photo Shop.  I tried to think of salad-like words that described the guests to add with their names (i.e. zesty, sweet, spicy).  I printed these on sticker paper, so they were very easy to peal off and stick over the nail polish remover label.

For wine charms and napkin rings, I wanted to use real salad garnishes.  Radishes worked perfectly for my napkin rings.  I used a thick needle to string ribbon through the radishes and tied it in the back.

My wine glasses have various etchings on them (2 of each kind), so I needed two different charms to distinguish between each of the two matching glasses.  I decided on a crouton and a black olive!

Menu: Salads of course!!  One of my guests had the idea of everyone bringing a salad, so this is what we did.  All of them were delicious!  We had pasta salad, tomato/feta/cucumber salad, fruit salad, taco salad, bbq chicken salad (pictured above), and edamame salad.

I also found a neat dessert salad recipe to try - Snickers Caramel Apple Salad! I didn't take a photo of it at the party, so this photo is from the Chef in Training website where I found the recipe.  It was a neat pairing of rich chocolate and caramel mixed with the juicy sliced apples.

Favor:  I sent each guest home with homemade Italian Salad Dressing mix.  I washed out baby food jars (you need to have a container that seals like a jar or zip lock baggie) and spray painted the tops to add a bit of color.  I create this cute tag to attach designing it so that "Dressing" and "Mix" stood out a little bit.  I also gave each guest the recipe of what was in the jar and what they will need to add in order to make the dressing at home.

We had a great time as always.  Here is just a photo of some of us and our costumes...Blue Cheese, Ranch Dressing, and Thousand Island!

Summer Social: Ice Cream Party

I Scream....You Scream...We all Scream for Ice Cream!!  To finish off the summer, I decided my August theme would center around ice cream.  Even though we had a small group at this one, it turned out cute, and we all had a great time.

Invite:  I designed the invite on Photoshop using images I found on Google.  My original plan was to make ice cream cones out of card stock and have the ice cream part lift up to reveal the party details, but my last minute theme decision left me with no time to do this.

Entry Decor:  I made this simple sign for my door out of foam boards and card stock.  The Dairy Queen sign I changed to MD for Monthly Dinner.  My plan was also to make these balloon ice cream cones to line the walkway to the door.

Inside Decor:  I set my table with a pink tablecloth and pastel plates and napkins.  For one centerpiece, bought terracotta pots and painted them to look like ice cream cones.  The perfectionist in me had a hard time with this because I did it freehand.  If you really want it perfect, I would tape it off and figure it all out beforehand!  I used pink carnations for the ice cream and white ones for whip cream.  The cherries were craft balls.  The banana splits I made with pastel tissue paper.  The banana boats I already owned.

For napkin rings, I cut out the bottom of ice cream cones and slid utensils and napkins through.  I made a simple paper cover to put around the cone.

The place cards were cute little ice cream trucks.  I bought the image off of Etsy for this and then just added my guest's name using PhotoShop.

To hang from the ceiling, I also made an ice cream popsicle banner. I cut foam noodles and then just glued popsicle sticks inside.  I used fishing line to string them.

My 5 year old daughter wanted to help decorate, so she drew ice cream cones with spoons and taped them up!

Menu:  I always like the theme to be reflected somehow in all aspects of my menu. I started out with ranch dip tinted with green food coloring and chips to symbolize "Mint Chip" ice cream.  I served the dip in a waffle bowl.

Next was a green salad with "cherry" tomatoes.

For the main dish, I bought banana split boats from Baskin and Robbins to use as my serving dish.  The banana split was mashed potato scoops as "ice cream", brown gravy as "chocolate syrup", meat cubes as "chocolate chunks", yellow squash as the "bananas", and diced red pepper and carrots as "sprinkles".  The dish was delicious and the banana splits were cute.

For dessert, I made a Neapolitan Brownie Ice Cream Cake.  I found the recipe on the Cake Boss Baking website.  It was really good.  The brownie part was a bit hard to eat because it was frozen, but beyond that, the cake was easy to make and well-liked by the guests.

Favor:  As a take-home favor, I gave each guest an ice cream sundae with topping ---in this case a loofa and shower gel.  The bowls and spoons I ordered from Amazon.  They came in a package of 12. The container for the shower gel is just a Tic-Tac container I emptied and them refilled with shower gel.  I couldn't find a plain container, but this seemed to work fine.  I made the label to attach to it.

All in all, it was a simple party that didn't take too much time to put together.  Ice Cream Socials are always fun, and this one was no exception!