Abra Cadabra - A Magical Dinner

I wanted to think of a simple theme I could quickly pull together for my March monthly dinner. I decided on a magician theme -an Abra Cadabra - Celebrating Magical Friendships dinner.  From wands and a top hat to bunny ears and dice decor, it was a fun night with friends.

Invite: I crated a simple black, white, and red invitation with gold glitter accents.  I used images of a top hat, bunny, wand, and cards to pull in iconic magician props. To tie in the "show" aspect, I put the details as a showtime and added the phrase "The Greatest Gathering of Girlfriends Ever Seen!"

For the table, I used a black tablecloth with white and red plates.

As a centerpiece, I set down gold glitter card stock and placed a top hat with a magic wand and a stuffed bunny on top.  I made an arch of cards gluing them to a large zip tie and then put the ends of the zip tie into small glasses filled with dice and red tissue paper to hold it in place.

I added fake bouquets of red flowers, cards, and dice on each side.

I purchased a deck of mini cards from Amazon, lightly glued 3 together, and placed each group of three on a folded napkin.

I created place cards by using hot glue on extra large dice and then adding the guest's name to the top.  I added an alliteration magician title for each guest.

I created magical wine labels for my red and white wine.  I titled the cabernet sauvignon Abraca-Cabernet with a tag line of "Now You See It...Now It's Gone" keeping the same background design as the invitation.  I swapped out the bunny's playing card for a red wine glass. For the white wine, I titled it The Vanishing Vino with a tagline of "White to Wand-erful" adding a wand and a bottle of white wine ready to "vanish" inside a top hat.

I used more cards from the mini deck I purchased as wine charms.

Added a little decoration to my everyday HOME sign.

Menu: Our appetizer was caprese skewers - tomato, mozzarella ball wrapped in a basil leaf, and then drizzled with balsamic and oil.  I called these Pick-a-Card Caprese with the intention of adding one of the mini cards to each skewer...as you can see in the photo, I got so busy I forgot to add the cards!

Our main dish was pulled pork sandwiches. I made the shredded pork in the crock pot, so I had less stress getting ready after getting home for work. I followed this recipe from Recipe Tin Eats for the rub and the cooking/browning portion. I skipped the homemade BBQ sauce and just used Sweet Baby Rays.  I purchase premade cole slaw to add and brioche buns. For a magic appropriate title, "Pulled from the Hat Pork - The Disappearing Swine!"

One side was green beans I baked in the oven.  Titled these "The Great Veggie-ni."

I also served baked mac and cheese. Since I taught all day and wouldn't get home from work until a couple hours before the party, I had to make these the easy way.  I found a recipe that used boxed mac and cheese that you cooked al dente and then just added breadcrumbs (I chose Panko breadcrumbs), Parmesan, and seasonings before baking it. The magic title for these was "Abraca-Delicious Mac and Cheese."

I had to pull a bunny from a hat somewhere in my menu, so of course it was dessert. We had bunny cupcakes with just the top of the head and ears showing. Simple to make with just a large marshmelow cut diagonally and then dipped in pink sugar.  The black cupcake wrappers were to help it look like a magician's hat.  The plan was to add a black card stock circle to the top of the wrapper to make it look like an upside down hat, but I ran out of time to get them cut.  We had a mini chocolate pretzel wand on the top for added fun.

Favor: Large pretzel rods dipped in chocolate to look like magic wands became my party favor.  I placed them in a bag of Trix cereal and called them Magic Trix!  I thanked my guests for "making the magic happen."

Everything about this dinner was magical - the friends, the food, and the fun details that all came together.  Hope you liked reading about the party!

Happy Grannytine's Day!

For our February monthly dinner I added a little twist to the typical Galintine's Day idea and hosted a Grannytine's Day dinner.  The girls came dressed up in bathrobes, granny glasses, cardigans and more which added a fun and silliness to the evening. It was a great chance to laugh together as even our conversations turned a little bit toward the amazing old ladies we all hope to become.

Invite: When designing the invite, I wanted to stick with Valentine's Day colors, but add in a doily and other cute granny-like images.  I kept it simple with a clipart granny holding a heart and a yarn heart with knitting needles. I added in verbiage like "supper club" and "dearie" for added fun.

Decorations: A red tablecloth and borrowed crystal vases and dishes became my centerpiece. The table runner was a white crocheted shawl that I lay across the center of the table.  I placed the crystal dishes and vases on top with simple baby's breath flowers and filled the dishes with candies that remind me of my grandmas - Werther's Originals hard candies, butterscotch circles, gum drops, Mounds and Almond Joy bars, mints, and strawberry hard candies.  I found most of these at the dollar store and/or Walmart.

For place cards, I made yarn hearts. I used an old See's candy box to cut out cardboard hearts in the size I wanted.  Then I wrapped yarn around the heart until you couldn't see the cardboard underneath.  I used hot glue at the point to help it stay and then hot glue to seal the end to the back.  I left a little extra yarn to add a tail to give the knitting look and stuck two toothpicks in the top like knitting needles.  I added the "so glad we're knit together" for added fun.

My mom happened to have just enough of these Valentine's Day napkins which were perfect for this dinner with their doily hearts.

I designed some creative wine labels in theme.  First was the red wine which I termed Prescription Strength Prune Juice. I used the same doily and grandma image from the invitation.  For the chardonnay, I wanted to play off the word "glasses" using it both in terms of eyeglasses and wine glasses.  I found an image of a grandma with a wine glass online and asked AI to use that image, but add wine glasses surrounding her. Voila!  I took the common grandma phrase, "Where Are My Glasses?" to put at the top to tie it all together.

For wine charms, I simply printed out icons often associated with grannies - yarn with needles, crossword puzzle, prescription bottle, dentures in a glass, eyeglasses, bridge cards, rocking chair, and newspaper with magnifying glass.

Menu: I wanted to have fun with the granny theme without being too harsh on grannies.  I decided to serve a casserole as my main dish. I chose a casserole that my mom made often when we were kids and one I know I liked - Ground Beef and Noodles in Sour-Cream Sauce.  I called it a "well-seasoned" casserole to pull in the theme.

I also served simple breadsticks - Breadsticks of the Golden Years.

The danger of accidentally peeing when you sneeze is not just a granny problem, but I had fun making this the title of the peas!

For dessert I made a 2-ingredient fluff (strawberry jello/sweetened condensed milk). I called this DEPENDS-ably Sweet dessert for a little old lady humor.  A friend gave me the super cute Valentine paper cups to serve them in which was perfect. A little whipped cream and a half strawberry to top them off and done.

Party Game: What old lady event is not complete without BINGO!  I designed a Bingo sheet to look like my invitation, but instead of numbers, I had grannyisms and things associated with grannies - bridge club, "Back in my Day," "Turn That Music Down," Sunday Supper, "I've Got Coupons," etc.  The free space was the same yarn heart with knitting needles from my invitation. As markers, we used conversation hearts from the party favor.

I gave the Bingo winner a puzzle! I looked for a cat puzzle or a knitting-related puzzle, but went with an old country scene instead.  Made sure it had "extra large pieces" and was only 300 pieces.

Also gave a box of chocolates to the best dressed granny of the evening.  I looked for a Whitman's Sampler because that reminds me of my grandma, but I didn't find one easily, so I went with the next closest thing.

Favor: As mentioned above, my party favor was a pill box for the week.  I filled it with conversation hearts that we used during Bingo, so the favor served two purposes.  I created a tag to go with it that read "A Daily Dose of Friendship."

Not all our ladies could make it to this dinner, but those of us that made it had a great time laughing and really getting into character.  It was a super fun theme!

Dinner in the Upside Down

The final season of Stranger Things was released just before my monthly dinner, and with all it's fun details, it made for a perfect theme for our January monthly dinner. I had so much fun crafting the decorations and details of this dinner, and we had a great time with our "Dinner in the Upside Down."

Invitation:  Must say I cheated a bit to make the background for this invitation.  I found the background image with movie theater text on it, then used ChatGPT to take away all the writing and add the "you're invited" lights at the top.  I downloaded the Stranger Things font to then Photoshop the rest of the invitation.

Decorations: I created a wall portal behind my dinner table.  It was actually really easy and inexpensive.  Didn't even take me long to put up.  I found a small strand of mini red Christmas lights and used blue painter's tape to tape them in a spiral pattern in the center of my wall.  I bought red and black plastic tablecloths from the dollar store to use for the rest.  I folded the red tablecloth to thicken it and then taped it over the lights.  I then folded a black tablecloth on each side of the red, taping it on inside to create the portal.  I cut the last plastic tablecloth into strips, taped each strip on the underside of the portal and twisted them taping them sporadically to the wall as they fanned out. It looked really cool in the dark.

For my table centerpiece, I borrowed and created some items iconic in the series.  I started by creating a table runner with tan butcher paper.  I set out 80s style Christmas lights on it, and then painted a letter of the ABCs next each bulb like Joyce Byers does in the series to talk to Will in the Upside Down. 

I plugged the lights into a cordless battery, and hid the rest of the lights inside the box they came in.  I covered this box with plastic tablecloth leftover from my wall portal and printed an image of an old-school TV screen with static (another iconic item from the show) and the name of our dinner to put in the center of the table. Under the "TV" I placed a Dungeons and Dragons book.

Eleven in the series is obsessed with Eggo waffles, so I used empty Eggo waffles boxes as vases and added dark red fake flowers from the dollar store.

Adding even more to the centerpiece, I borrowed Scoop's Ahoy ice cream pints and a demogorgon mug from a friend, used a sailor's cap from my dress-up bin, and set out various cassette tapes to add to the table.

I love these paper napkins I folded to look like demogorgons!  I looked up flower napkin folds online and found this one that was close to the demogorgon shape.  After folding, I printed a scary looking open mouth to lightly glue to the center and used a white paint pen to draw lines for teeth.

For placecards, I used AI to create Dungeons and Dragons game cards for each guest (front and back).  I gave AI a photo of each guest, a photo of what a real game card looks like, and some details about the guest's hobbies, then it did all the work and generate these super fun placecards!

A neighbor was giving away these three Stranger Things posters, so I grabbed those to hang up above a side table and added more of the twisted black tablecloth pieces.   Borrowed Stranger Things funko pops, Polly Pocket walkie talkie and legos to add to my mantle too.

I created wine labels to match the theme as well calling my red wine Hellfire Club Red with the Hellfire Club's logo.  I added that the wine was "bottled in Hawkins, IN" and that it was "Dark & Delicious" to further bring in the D&D reference.  The white wine I named Mindflayer Melt Chardonnay.  I added an image of the mindflayer from season two with glasses of chardonnay in it's arms.  For added fun, I included that it was only available at Starcourt Mall, an iconic setting in season 3.

For wine charms, I printed images associated with the series: a Scoops Ahoy employee shirt, Dustin's cap, "Running Up that Hill" cassette tape, crushed coke can, Surfer Boy pizza van, a demogorgon, Eleven's eggo waffle, and the WSQK van.

Menu: For this dinner, I started with Demogorgonzola Pizza as an appetizer.  I used pie pastry crust to shape into a demogorgon head. Then I spooned on grilled onions, gorgonzola cheese and cooked bacon before baking it in the oven. I served it right out of the oven.  So yummy.

Next was Benny's Upside Down Burgers. Benny's is the burger restaurant from season 1.  These were just normal hamburgers/cheeseburgers that were assembled upside down.  I printed a small image I found online of Benny's Burgers logo to put on a toothpick and stick in the top.  I had grilled onions and bacon for guests to add to their burger as well as lettuce and tomato.

French fries and burgers go together so of course we had fries, but I served waffle fries to tie in Eleven's love of eggo waffles.  "Friends Don't Lie" is a popular line for the show, so I added "Friends Don't FRY" to my menu card for this one.

For dessert we had red velvet cupcakes with a white buttercream frosting.  My friend offered to make these for me which was amazing.  She added a mini eggo waffle to each cupcake, and then used M&Ms for lights, and piped on string and letters to represent the alphabet wall from season 1.

I also served a fudge swirl ice cream cup to go with the cupcake.  I created a small circle to put on the top with the Scoops Ahoy logo.

Favor: For a party favor, I made cookies inspired by The Upside Down.  I used a red velvet cake mix with 1/3 cup oil and 2 eggs.  Once whipped together I scooped the dough into balls and rolled them in crushed oreos (removing the cream part before crushing them).  Then baked them for a little less than 10 minutes.  Super simple and tasty.  Hindsight, I could have just purchased black wafer cookies without the cream to save time, but didn't really think of that until after I was already scraping out cream from Oreos.

This dinner was a ton of fun to put together and the girls had I had a good time as well.  I played a Stranger Things playlist in the background throughout the party.