Dozen Years of Fun - Donut Party!

It is hard to believe, but I have been hosting these themed dinners once of month for 12 years!  That's 144 dinner parties with friends!  To commemorate hosting these for a dozen years, I themed this month's dinner around a dozen donuts.  It was so fun to put together and I think it makes a super fun birthday or other party theme as well.

Invite:  I designed my invite with pastel colors because when I think of donuts, I always think of the pink donut boxes and the pink donuts with sprinkles (thanks Homer Simpson).  I found some fun sprinkle-like fonts to use to add to the fun.

Entry:  A friend of mine happened to have these giant donut inflatable pool floats that she let me borrow for the party.  I placed two of the biggest ones at the front door with a small sign to welcome guests.

Table Decor:  I set the table with a bright pink tablecloth and white plates.  For a centerpiece I made donuts out of Styrofoam to place on skewers.  I bought a medium piece of rectangle Styrofoam, and then used an empty can with a circumference the size I wanted it as a "cookie" cutter.  You could buy already circular Styrofoam, but it was too expensive for me, so I just did it this way.  I put Mod Podge on the Styrofoam after cutting, then painted them.  After a day, I added the felt frosting and sprinkles.  I already had the coffee pot from my Friends monthly Dinner, so I just repainted it black and filled it with tissue paper and then coffee beans on top.

Also along the table, I placed a few photos of our dinners over the years.  I chose one dinner from each of the 12 years. 

The front of each had one photo with the year and the back a different photo. I placed the photos on toothpicks and then stuck them in donuts along the center of the table.

For a place card, I made pretend "frequent visitor" cards with each guest's name.  I used my whole punch to punch out the months which that particular guest had been able to attend our monthly dinners this past year.

For a napkin holder, I cut a mini chocolate donut in half and placed it over a rolled napkin.  I had to carve out a bit of the inside circle to make it work, but I think it did.

The beverage and favor table had fun donut displays too.  Over the mantle I placed two more of the inflatable donuts. 

I made a simple donut banner with various donut images I found online.  I sized the donuts to be the same as my circle cutter so cutting them was easy.  I taped them to a piece of ribbon so that they could be close together and overlapping a bit.

I made these fun wine labels on PhotoShop.  I made them to match all my party printables and decor.  I especially love the Sips and Sprinkles of Happiness...just sounds fun.

I did not get a great photo of my wine charms, but they were super easy and cute.  I used the same donut images I used for the banner just resized them to fit around wine stems.

Menu: Although I love donuts, I don't think serving all donuts at a DINNER party would quite work.  I decided to serve mostly donut-shaped foods, but just one donut in the mix.  That donut was the bun for the main dish...hamburgers.  I served these with the fixings on the side as not all my girls love the same items on their burgers. 

Along side the burgers, I served donut-shaped potatoes.  I cut them out with cookie cutters, then sprinkled them with Parmesan cheese, paprika, seasoned salt, and pepper before baking them in the oven. 

I also cut watermelon into donuts as another side.

For dessert, I made a cake in a bundt cake pan and then topped it with a strawberry glaze and sprinkles.  The glaze was a bit runnier than I would have liked, but it tasted delicious.

Favor:  My friend helped me make these amazing mini donuts!  They were so yummy and fun to make.  We made a dozen for each guest, and they were a great hit with the guests.  We did vanilla donuts with pink candy melts and rainbow sprinkles, vanilla donuts with white candy melts and black sprinkles, and chocolate donuts with chocolate candy melts and chopped peanuts.

I bought the pink donut boxes from a local donut shop and made a label for the top.

It's been a great 12 years, and I love these ladies. Can't wait for another "dozen" years of fun!

The Princess Bride

The Princess Bride is one of my family's favorite summer movies.  We must have seen it at least 4 times this summer alone, and you can often hear my husband and I quoting lines from this movie.  Since I love this movie, I thought it would make a super fun monthly dinner theme...and I was right!  This was so much fun to put together.

Invite:  I designed the invite playing with some of the lines from the movie to include in the text.

Entry:  For the entry I made a R.O.U.S. (Rodent of Unusual Size) out of a trash-bag. I stuffed it with a pillow and a blanket and tied a zip-tie  to make the head.  The eyes and ears are cut out of cardstock and taped onto the bag.  For the tail, I detached the hose from my husband's ShopVac. Easy and cute.

I also made a simple sign with cardstock and foam board to welcome guests.

Table Decor:  I had so much fun decorating my table with iconic items or lines from the movie.

The Battle of Wits makes an easy centerpiece.  I bought decorative glasses from the dollar store and spray-painted them black and grey. I painted a wine bottle black, found a large rock, and placed a white napkin on it to represent the tablecloth from the Battle of Wits scene in the movie. I filled a small bottle with powdered sugar and made an Iocane Powder label.  Added a simple Battle of Wits sign, and that was it.  It was a super inexpensive and easy centerpiece.

Some close-ups of the centerpiece.

I think the place setting had a couple of my favorite details of the theme.  My mom helped me make these Dread Pirate Roberts' head-wraps with black fabric.  They are pinned and tacked/tied with thread - no sewing involved!  The mask I cut out of cardstock with my Cricut.

The second favorite detail I came up with was the napkins I shaped into swords.  I bought grey dinner napkins, unfolded them, refolded them along the long edge, and them cut off the end to look pointed.  The hilt I cut out with my Cricut.

I set the napkin swords along the tops of each plate.

For placecards, I used the famous line of Inigo Montoya, "Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya.  You killed my father.  Prepare to die." Instead of his name, I put the guest's name and a fill in the blank.

I made wine charms to represent different characters/sayings/events in the movie.  I had the shrieking eels, the Brute Squad, twoo wuv, iocane powder, stormin' the castle, the Dread Pirate Roberts, and the 6 fingered man.

These are the wine labels I created for the evening.  A little Inconceivable Cab for guest's to take "Sips of Insanity" and an "As You Wish" white.

Above the side table, I quickly made this simple "As You Wish" banner for added decor.

For a little snack as guests were waiting for the meal to be ready, I had two appetizers.  The first was just a bowl of peanuts.  Fezzik is one of my favorite characters in the movie, and I love his rhyming throughout. "No more rhymes now. I mean it!  Anybody want a peanut?" has me giggling every time.

The second appetizers was MLT sandwiches. MLT's = Mutton, Lettuce, and Tomato sandwiches (the mutton in this case is turkey).  Billy Crystal as Miracle Max cracks me up in the movie, and I didn't think we could have a Princess Bride dinner party without serving MLTs. Since I didn't want it to be my main dish, I made bite-size sandwiches as an appetizer. I used sword toothpicks for added fun just because it went with the overall theme of the evening.

For the main meal, I made the three dangers of the Fire Swap.  First was the R.O.U.S.  To make these Rodents of Unusual Size, I grilled some thick round steaks and then added cardstock ears on toothpicks and set them on a tail also made of cardstock.  They don't look super fancy or professional, but they got the point across and gave us all a laugh.


Here's a look at one of the R.O.U.S. steaks close up.  I guess they look more cute than scary, but...

The second danger of the fire swap is the Flame Spurts that erupt from the ground.  For this, I served red, yellow, and orange peppers sliced to look like flames.  These are seasoned and then baked in the oven so that we could keep the shape.

The third danger of the Fire Swamp is Lightning Sand.  This was just a simple brown rice.

I centered the dessert around the Princess Buttercup character.  I mean, who doesn't love Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, right?  This peanut butter cup cheesecake was very good, but very rich.  It has an Oreo cookie base, a peanut butter cheesecake with some pieces of Reese's in the center, and then of course more Reese's on top. If you like peanut butter, then this is the dessert for you.

Favor:  For a parting gift for guests, I bought chocolate covered almonds and put them in little jars.  I designed a tag for Miracle Max's  Mostly Dead Revival Pills to stick on the front.  Pretty simple, and easy to put together.

All in all, we had a lot of fun Stormin' the Castle and laughing at parts of the movie playing in the background.  Another great party with a fun theme!

Lovin' Country Music

Love country music?  Then this might be a great party for you.  This is a slight twist on the typical cowboy/rodeo theme party because all the decor, food, and favors centered specifically around country music songs.  While country music fans would be able to pick up on all the references, I included some popular country songs that even non-country lovers out there would know. (Non-country lovers do exist, right?)

Invite:  The invite is an example of pulling in titles of country songs.  I included classics like Hank Williams Jr.'s "All my Rowdy Friends are Coming Over Tonight" and George Strait's "Check Yes or No" as well as newer hits like Jason Aldean's "My Kinda Party".  The fonts are Duality, Bleeding Cowboys, and Docktrin.  I found them all free online.

Entry Decor:  I made a simple sign on poster board with the lyrics from Luke Bryan's song, "You Can Crash My Party Anytime".  I placed my daughter's cowboy boots and an old pair of mine on the floor next to this poster as well.

Decor:  I borrowed an acoustic guitar from a friend to set on my table.  I grabbed my cowboy boots and put a vase inside with red roses. 

My parents have these large black music notes for a concert organization they are involved in, so I borrowed them to put next to the boots.  A brown tablecloth completed the look.

I had so much fun making these place cards.  I found CD cover photos of various country music albums and used PhotoShop to replace the artist's face and name with those of each of my guests.  We got a kick out of looking at all of these! I put the printed covers inside a CD case to make it look real. The red or black bandana underneath was the napkin for the meal.

Here's mine.  Thanks for loaning me your body Carrie Underwood!

I created my wine labels using references to popular songs. For the red wine it was Chris Young's "Gettin' You Home."

For the white wine, the song was Deana Carter's "Strawberry Wine."  I cut up some strawberries for guests to put in the wine.  It was quite tasty.

I went to the local Guitar Center and purchased some plastic guitar picks in various colors to use as wine charms. My husband drilled a small hole in them and then I used twine to attach them to my mason jars.

Menu:  Who doesn't love fried chicken?  Or should I say, who doesn't like their chicken fried?  One of my favorite country bands is the Zac Brown Band, so I had to incorporate their song into my party somehow.  It became our main dish.

One side was corn on the cob which went with Tim McGraw's song "Where The Green Grass Grows."  I made all the menu cards to match my invitations, and served each dish with the menu card so guests knew the link.

Slices of watermelon to go with "Watermelon Crawl" by Tracy Byrd.  It's such a fun song to dance along with and watermelon is an easy side dish.

I served biscuits with honey butter to round out the meal.  This went with Kasey Musgraves' song "Biscuits" and Lady Antebellum's song "American Honey".

My favorite part of the meal was the Texas cake complete with signs for all of George Strait's "exs".  I printed off an outline of Texas and just used that to cut an 11"x 13" cake.  I used the pieces after cutting to create the pointed tip of Texas.

Favor: I wanted a fun favor that wouldn't be too difficult or expensive to put together. I found these silly tattoos on Amazon.  Then I used PhotoShop to create a pocket with the sheet music for Jason Aldean's "Tattoos on this Town" and the same image (with lyrics) that I created for my menu cards.

Here another idea I was considering before I decided on the tattoos.  Use Runaway June's song "Lipstick" for a bridal shower. Have your tag read, "Glad (bride-to-be's name) found somebody "who ruins (her) lipstick not (her) mascara" and give each guest a tube of lipstick.

This was a super fun party to put together and would be perfect for any country music fans.  Hope you enjoyed the details!