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!

Thrillers & Chillers: A Summer of Suspense

As a teacher, one of the great things about summertime is having a lot more time to read. To add some reading fun to our July monthly dinner, I hosted a Thrillers & Chillers: Summer of Suspense dinner party with thrilling books filling all aspects of the theme.

Invite: I created the invitation on PhotoShop compiling knife, fingerprint, and crime scene tape images I found online.  I incorporated some popular novel titles into the wording.  The Guest List, Behind Closed Doors, and The Woman in the Window were all great novels.  I asked guests to bring a new or gently used mystery or thriller novel (wrapped for even more mystery) to exchange to add more fun to the evening.

Decorations: I set the dining table like a crime scene - a  black plastic tablecloth that I drew the outline of a body with a wide-tipped paint pen. I set out some suspenseful books around the body and made yellow evidence number signs to place next to them.

I made mini evidence bags to hold the napkin.  I purchased mini ziplock bags from Michaels Craft Store and created a label on PhotoShop. The label had each guest's name as the detective and then the item collected was listed as Subject A's napkin, or Victim A's napkin, or Witness A's napkin, etc.  The date collected was the party date and the case number was 226.  Why? Because this monthly dinner is the 226th one I have hosted for these ladies!

For place cards, I made small evidence folders. I took large manilla folders and cut smaller versions out of them.  I wrote each guest's name on the top of the folder and created a Top Secret label to place in the middle. 

Inside the folder, I had funny things about each guest.  An alias, motive, and last scene phrase that matched their personality or something about them.  It was fun to read these aloud while we ate our dinner. Some of the write-ups shown here are a guest who had her last chemo treatment the day of the party, an avid wine drinker, and a junior high English teacher.

When I designed my wine labels, I searched for mystery/suspense book titles with white or red in the name.  I found Little White Lies by Philippa East and used that cover for the white wine.  I changed the author to Sharda Nay (chardonnay) for added fun, and created a new tagline - "Deceptively Crisp. Deliciously Good."   

For the cabernet, I decided to use the cover of James Patterson's novel Confessions of the Dead.  I liked the alliteration of Cabernet Confessions, so I added Cabernet to the title.  Again, I swapped the true author to a fake one -- C.A. Bernet (cabernet) and the tagline to be "Spill it All -- Just Not the Wine" to go with the idea of spilling confessions.

For wine charms, I printed out mini book covers for other suspenseful books.

Menu:  Since books were the focus on this theme, I also created my menu to be summertime related, but also related to mystery books. I served grilled hamburgers with all the fixings for guests to add on - bacon, grilled onions, cheese, lettuce, tomato.  I swapped out the word dragon for burger in the novel, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Along with the burgers, I served grilled vegetable kabobs with zucchini, yellow squash, mushrooms, and red, yellow, and orange peppers. I swapped out the word woman for kabob in the book The Woman in Cabin 10.

As one side, I made coleslaw changing the manslaughter to manSLAWter in the novel Murder, Manslaughter, and Mayhem.

The final side was watermelon.  For this, I swapped out the word woman for watermelon for the novel The Woman in the Window and added a evil looking watermelon face into the cover.

For dessert, I made chocolate mousse. We topped the plate and the whipped cream of each serving with an edible fake blood mixture made with mainly cornstarch and dye. I used my Cricut cutting machine to make mini cleavers with blood splatter to use like cupcake toppers.  The book title I used for this was Murder on the Orient Express and just swapped murder for chocolate.

Favor:  Since we were having a mystery book exchange during the party, I decided to make a bookmark as my parting gift.  I used PhotoShop to create a crime scene body outline and added some blood splatter to it.  I added the phrase "For my partners in crime (fiction). Always love our killer nights."  I used my Cricut to cut the image out as well as blob of red cardstock behind to add to the murder scene idea.  Added a string with a bead at the end.  I slid some of the favors into or on top of suspenseful books for added decor.

We really had a great time at this dinner party, and I cannot wait to read the novel I got in the book exchange. I have only a couple weeks left of my summer, so I better get reading!

Eggless Easter Party

The price of eggs is super high right now, so I decided to have a little fun with that idea for my April monthly dinner. I decided to host an Eggless Easter party theme.  It was a lot of fun to put together the decor, menu, and all the details.  Check it out...

Invite: I typically design my invitation from scratch using Photoshop, but this time, I decided to use Canva as I found a sweet Easter party invitation already created.  This required very little effort on my part which was nice.  I added a no symbol around the Easter egg and an empty egg carton to have the invite match my theme.  I also tried to incorporate some egg-related words.

Decor: Instead of just using my typical Easter decorations, I tried to stick with egg-related decor, but still in the pastel colors of Easter. I set my table with a green tablecloth and white and pink plates.

For the centerpiece, I had a few different ideas displayed.  At the center was a pink Easter basket fill with I.O.U. eggs made out of paper instead of real eggs.  The sign in front read, "Eggs to be provided when prices drop" for an added giggle.

On one side, I borrow decorative chickens from a neighbor. I made picket signs and taped these to each chicken.  The signs said things like, "Stop the Egg-Cessive Prices" and "Will Lay for Fair Wages" among others.

On the other side, I set out an empty egg carton with ceramic and decorative eggs on top. The sign with these said "Egg-comy Crisis!"

For place cards, I bought mini egg cartons with egg-shaped chewing gum inside.  I ordered these online from Walmart. I swapped out the advertisement on the inside for a card with the guest's name on it that I made with Photoshop.

With each napkin, I printed out a funny meme about egg prices.  These were all different and hilarious from a guy proposing to this girlfriend with a carton of eggs rather than a ring, to eggs being compared to drugs to peddle them to make you rich, etc.  I just found memes online that I thought were funny and printed them out until I had one for every guest.

Creating and designing the wine labels for this party was fun, but challenging.  For the chardonnay, I used the phrase "No Yolk, Just Oak" and for the red wine, it was "Crack Open the Cabernet." You can't see it in the photo, but the bottom of the red wine read "Un-Hatched Reserve."

The wine charms were clipart images of various egg cartons with price tags attached that I resized and printed out.  Each had a different color background to distinguish them.

Menu:  I didn't just want to serve foods that did not involve eggs, but I wanted menu items to either look like eggs or have some sort of egg reference. I started with a green salad with CHICKpeas and other toppings.  I used an oval shaped plate and filled the bottom with romaine lettuce.  Then I layered the toppings to look like a painted Easter egg.  The toppings I used besides chickpeas were shredded carrots, olives, tomatoes, shredded cheese, and corn. 

For a main dish, I served CHICKen with HATCH Chili Salsa on top.  This was a complete experiment as I did not have a recipe.  My husband grilled the chicken, and when it was cooked, I spread some store bought hatch chili salsa on top.  Easy and really tasty.

I also made twice-baked potatoes, but used mini potatoes and made them look like Deviled Eggs.  I didn't use a recipe for this either as the recipes I found were for true deviled potatoes (served cold with relish and everything).  I wanted these hot, so after using a melon baller to carve out a pit in one side of the potato half, the carved out potato was whipped with butter, salt, pepper, and chives before piping it back into the hole of the potato half.  I baked these for 10 minutes to heat them up and cut a few more chives for the top before serving.  Aren't they cute?

For a vegetable, I served Easter Bunny's Carrots.  Nothing to do with eggs for this one, but carrots are Easter related, so I went with that.  Plus they were easy to make as I just seasoned baby carrots and then roasted them.

For dessert, I made a delicious bird's nest out of chocolate and butterscotch chips, peanut butter, and chow mein noodles.  I followed this recipe, which makes cookies, but I added more chow mein noodles as I wanted big nests rather than just a cookie size. I used an egg cookie cutter to shape vanilla ice cream into eggs before the party, and then put them in the freeze to keep their shape.  I pulled them out right before serving to place in the center of the nest.  I called this dessert "Egg-celent Nests with an Affordable Egg."

Favor: I had a bit of fun with my party favor.  I purchased plastic 6-count egg cartons from Amazon. I filled the carton with CHICK-shaped Peeps in a variety of colors. Once closed, I used a pastel ribbon to wrap around the carton and affixed a tag.  The tag read "Eggs to too expensive, but you CHICKS are my favorite Peeps anyway!"

Definitely used my creativity with this party, as it is not your typical theme, but it was really fun to plan and execute. I'd say the most popular aspects of the party were the memes, the salad, the mini deviled potatoes, and the party favors.  Hope you enjoyed this party and my post!