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!

Palette to Palate Dinner

As a vibrant end of summer dinner party, I decided to theme August's monthly dinner around colors.  I decided on a Palette to Palate theme where the decor would center around painting palettes and bright colors while the food would play into a colorful palate with each course.

Invitation: I designed my invitation to be bright and colorful.  I found an image of plates and dishes with bold colors, and then added a paint swatch look on the right with colors that matched the dishes.  I asked each guest to chose a color to wear from head to toe for added fun.  I had them RSVP with the color they chose, so I could match the place setting details to those colors.  The guests RSVP'd on a group text thread, so others could see what colors were already taken.

Decorations: I cut brown butcher paper to fit my table and then painted splotches to look like a paint palette.  The colors matched the specific colors my guests were going to wear for the dinner.

As a centerpiece, I used a small paint can from Michaels as a vase and purchased bright flowers to place inside.  Around it, I placed snacks in various colors for guests to nibble on - pepperjack cheese, tomatoes, cucumbers, cheddar cheese, black olives.  My intent with this was to pull in the "palate" part of the theme. I also add the invitation on a mini easel.

For the napkins, I went to the hardware store and picked up paint swatches in the colors my guests were wearing.  I folded a napkin of their color, made a small slice in the swatch, and slid the bottom of the napkin through.

The placecards were paint palettes and brushes to match the guest's color.  I cut these out of cardstock with my Cricut machine and used a paint pen to write the names.

The place setting when it was put together for each guest...

I like my wine labels to be themed to my dinners as well, so I designed these with the theme in mind.  For the red wine (merlot), I found an image for a red wine glass and paint brushes.  I added a paint swatch of the wine colors and labeled this wine "Merlot-dramatic Palette." For the white wine (chardonnay), I used the phrase "hard to resist," but switched it to "chard" to resist the golden hues.  Again I added a color palette and an image of white wine and grapes.

For the wine charms I used a second set of the same paint swatches from the hardware store I used for the napkins and cut out a circle a little smaller than my wine glass bottom.  I then cut an inner circle and a slice to wrap them around the stem before taping the slice closed. Free and easy.

Menu: I wanted each course to be monochromatic which surprisingly wasn't as difficult as I thought it might be.  We started with an appetizer of all ORANGE.  I hollowed out an orange pepper to hold a red pepper hummus.  As dippers, I had orange peppers, carrots, and sweet potato chips.

Next, I served a GREEN salad. This was romaine lettuce, spinach, peas, cucumber, avocado, and green pumpkin seeds. I served it with an avocado lime dressing.

The main dish was RED.  I made red pepper pasta with rotisserie chicken.  It was a new recipe, and very popular with my guests and my family.  I will definitely make it again. I chose this recipe because it was low carb, not time consuming, and it was bright red! It was used chicken (that I didn't have to take time cooking by the way), so I knew the red color wouldn't be diluted like it might if I used ground beef or turkey.

Dessert did not go initially as planned, but worked out great. I found a recipe for an easy purple cheesecake, but could not find blueberry jello anywhere.  The closest I found was berry blue.  So I followed the recipe, but with berry blue jello instead.  This changed my dessert color scheme to light blue which was fine since I topped it with blue berries.

Favor: For a parting gift for my guests, I bought boxes of candy in the colors that each guest wore to the party. I designed a tag that read "Thank HUE for adding color to our Night" and attached it with matching ribbon.  For display only, I added a small bottle of the matching paint color to the display.

This was a fun theme to put together (I know I say that every month!).  It was neat to have each of the girls dressed up in their color too.  Would totally recommend this party theme. Hope you liked it!