Seventeen Magazine Party

Hard to believe, but this past Monday, we celebrated 17 Years of Monthly Dinners!  Yes, I started hosting these parties seventeen years ago before some of us ladies were married or had kids! What a great 17 years it has been.  To honor 17 years, my theme was based around SEVENTEEN magazine.  The decor and meal were full of silly headlines & aspects of this magazine, so it was super fun to come up with what to do.

Invitation:  I found an image of the cover of Seventeen from October 2006 to use for my invitation since this is the month and year that I started hosting monthly dinners for my friends.  I then used Photoshop to change the taglines around Hilary Duff on the cover to represent things about my dinners as well as the party details.  For example, "204 Fun Theme Ideas" because this dinner was our 204th dinner, etc.

Decorations:  I used bright colors for my table because Seventeen magazine always uses bright pink or red as a focus color.  Kept the centerpiece simple with some beautiful and bright flowers in vases.

I wrapped each vase with two Seventeen magazine covers I printed out on my computer and then taped around the vase.  Simple.

For placecards, I asked each guest to tell me their celebrity crush.  I then printed out a photo of that celebrity as a magnet.  I created a Seventeen magazine style tag for each that read, "How to Be a Guy MAGNET & attract your Dream Man" for fun.  Hopefully you get the magnet play on words with this.

I used bright napkins and created a simple napkin ring with the Seventeen logo on it to wrap around them.

I found another issue of Seventeen Magazine to adapt for my menu.  Each item of the menu had a tagline around Jennifer Lawrence.  These took a bit of creativity to come up with and then to Photoshop onto the magazine image, but it was fun.

I used two more magazine covers to PhotoShop for my wine labels.  I found a Seventeen magazine cover that talked about a Massive SHOPPING Guide with style blogger's coolest pics and makeup deals, and changed it to a Massive WHITE WINE guide with wine blogger's coolest pics and wine deals.  

For the red wine, I used the Katy Perry cover that has The Best FALL CLOTHES for Your Body, and changed it to The Best RED WINE for Your Body.  The rest of the taglines on the cover stayed the same.

For wine charms, I printed out other Seventeen magazine covers.

Magazine Menu: As stated above, all menu item had a tagline on the Seventeen magazine cover I set on top of each plate at the table.  Our starter was a delicious cheese dip with crackers.  This went with the line, "Cheesy Pick-Up Lines - Don't Fall for that DIP."

For the main dish I served chicken legs that were really tasty.  They were easy to make and baked in the oven, so I didn't have to fuss with them too much.  The seasoning was so good, I made it again later in the week as well.  The tagline for this dish on the Seventeen menu magazine was "Get the Best LEGS ever! Look so tasty, he'll gobble you up!"  The original magazine, had "Best Jeans Ever."

The original Seventeen cover had 250+ easy hair ideas as a main tagline, so I had to think of a menu item that could somewhat go with that.  I decided on straight and curly French fries since hair can be curly or straight.  I purchased curly and regular fries and just popped them in the oven.  I didn't make them from scratch.

Taking some sort of beauty or health related quiz was always popular in Seventeen magazines, so I decided to incorporate a quiz into my menu as well.  My quiz tagline was, "Would you rather VEG out or go out?"  For vegetables, I served red, orange, and yellow peppers, zucchini, mushrooms that I grilled on the stove.

For dessert, I made Orange Crush Cupcakes.  The cupcake is only two ingredients -- a can of Crush soda and a box of vanilla cake mix.  The buttercream frosting had a few more ingredients, but was tasty too. I added a piece of orange slice candy to the top for added fun.  The tagline on my menu for these was, "Guy's Crush Confessions."

Favor: For the party favor, I had various skin and hair projects found in the travel section of Target.  I found a Seventeen magazine cover that had a bold tagline about hair and skin and simply printed up that part of the cover to use as a tag.

I am not sure if teens know anything about Seventeen magazine since it is only online nowadays, but this was a fun theme to play with.  It could easily be adapted for a teenager's birthday party and just change the magazine title if the teen is not seventeen.

Chillin' with my Gnomies

Gnomes are all the rage right now, and why not? They are so cute!  I decided to theme our December monthly dinner around gnomes with a Chillin' with my Gnomies party!  This was super fun to create & we had a blast eating our gnome-themed food, painting our gnome craft, and of course hanging with our gnomies to catch up.

Invite:  Since this was a holiday party, I designed the invitations with red, green, and white as the accent colors.  I purchased a design of a gnome on Etsy, and after getting permission from the designer, I used this same gnome on much of my party decorations including the invitation.

Decor:  I purchased a few items for this party, but most of the amazing gnomes I borrowed from friends.  For the dining table, I used two snowflake decorations I already owned as the centerpiece along with lots of gnomes.  The cute MERRY gnomes were borrowed.  The two gnomes on the each end of the centerpiece were wine bottle covers that I purchased from Amazon in a 4-pack and just placed these two on pint glasses.

For a place card, I used the gnome from my invitation, and just added each guest's name to the beard.  Instead of napkin rings, I folded a green paper napkin into a hat to add to the place card.  Easy and cute.

For my beverage and favor table, I borrowed these amazing gnomes for the table and the mantle.  I love them so much, and they really added to the decorations.

The beverage and favor table.

Instead of designing wine bottle labels, I purchased these gnome bottle covers from Amazon to use.  As stated above, they were a 4 pack and I only needed two for wine, so the other two created gnomes for my centerpiece.

For wine charms, I purchased these small wooden gnomes from Amazon. I was originally planning to use them as place cards, but when they arrived and were smaller than I anticipated.  I decided to use them for wine charms instead.  I used my Cricut to put the first initial of each guest on the beard.

Outside, I borrowed this blow-up gnome for my front yard to welcome guests to the party. 

Menu:  Turns out, the only gnome food ideas I found online were desserts, so I had to invent my own meal. We started with a Gnome Garden (Salad).  I cut radishes to look like mushrooms.  On top of the green spinach, I added garbanzo beans, feta cheese, and pecans. Guests could choose either an Italian dressing or a Balsamic Vinaigrette.

I decided to make Gnome-made giant meatballs wrapped in bacon along with mashed potatoes for the main meal.  Although they don't look amazing, my attempt was to have each one look like a gnome head and beard.  I made mini party hats with holiday cardstock to place on top.  For this dinner, I used ground turkey instead of ground beef.  I think the balls would have stayed a bit more round with beef, as the turkey was harder to shape into a ball and flattened a bit in the oven.  For the nose, we just used garbanzo beans.

I made these holiday gnome cupcakes for dessert.  I dipped the waffle cones in red candy melts to give it a little something.  The beard, nose, and green body is gnome-made frosting.

Party Activity: At our December monthly dinners, I always like to have some sort of craft for us to do.  I wanted to make it a simple one that could be done in a short amount of time, so I opted for painted wooden gnomes.  Love how they came out.

My husband cut all the 2x4 pieces of wood before the event.  They were around 10" tall and sanded. I couldn't find wooden circles at the craft store, so I bought brown/tan pom poms to use for the noses.  For the beard, guests could choose from craft fur or a white mop.  The mops are from the dollar store and each mop can make a ton of these gnomes.  The craft fir can make a few gnomes, but is more expensive.  Some guests made eyebrows for their gnome, some did not.

Our first finished gnome of the evening.

Love this spirited gnome my friend painted for her young daughter.  She even painted the mop strands of the beard slightly.

Forgot to get a group photo at this dinner, but we had a great time together to close out our last monthly dinner for 2022.

Target Monthly Dinner

A random theme...yes, but a totally fun one.  April's monthly dinner theme was all centered around Target, my family's favorite place to shop for almost anything. I had fun creating this monthly dinner, as it was easy to keep it simple with a little creativity and a sense of fun.

Invite: I designed a simple invitation using target logos and bold fonts.  I played with the wording of Target's tag line "Expect More. Pay Less" adding "Expect More Fun. Pay Less Mind."  I asked guests to wear red shirts if possible and khaki pants if they had them.

On my front door, I created Entrance/Entrada sign and the green automatic arrow like you see on the front doors of most Target stores.

Decor:  I set my table with a bright red tablecloth and white plates.  I cut up Target plastic bags to place next to each other for a table runner.  For the centerpiece, I used a small shopping cart I have had for years, and tall cups from the Target snack bar.  The manager at my local Target was kind enough to give me these.  I filled the cups with tissue paper and sliced the top of red straws to hold Target gift cards.  I used mostly old gift cards I had from Target and some I bought new.  The gift cards on this centerpiece would make great party game prizes if you were doing a Target theme birthday party and playing games.

Instead of napkin rings, I simply printed out a Target logo and placed it on top of a folded napkin.

For place cards, I made Target employee name badges which we all wore throughout the night.  I made these out of cardstock and just taped a safety pin to the back.  I was going to paint wooden circles, but couldn't find the right shape of circle at my local craft supply store, so I just went with normal paper.  They were quick, easy to make, and worked fine.

I had a fun with my side table. The Target manager let me borrow a shopping basket, so I used that as well as created my own dollar bin.  More details on this later.  The H-O-M-E mantle piece is always up in my home and the "O" just changes by holiday.  I covered up the Easter bunny "O" with the Target logo for this dinner.

Designing wine labels is one of the many fun details I love to create for my monthly dinners.  It took me quite a while to come up with something clever and to design the labels, but they got a laugh from the guests.  For the red wine, I went with "Target & Red Wine Make me feel fine!" I designed a bunch of red wines filling a target basket for the label.  For the white wine, it read "A Perfect Night: A little Chardonnay and a trip to Tarjay."

Instead of wine glass, I used smaller plastic cups from Target.  The wine charm was a Target Red Card which each guest's name on it.

Menu:  To make the menu cards a little more theme-oriented and fun, and made them price tags to match the ones that Target uses in it's stores. We started with a Target Salad.  On the bed of greens I organized the toppings into red and white circles to make a Target bullseye.  The outer circle was a combination of diced red peppers and sliced tomatoes.  The white layer was hard boiled egg and Feta cheese, and the bullseye was sliced tomatoes.

I also served pepperoni pizza.  The original plan was to shape the pizzas into individual circles and then use the mozzarella cheese and pepperoni to make the red and white Target logo.  Our circles were rather odd shaped, but the Target was still evident with the cheese and pepperoni.

For dessert, I made Bullseye Pupcakes.  These were vanilla cupcakes with a white frosting.  I made mini bones with peanut butter chocolate melts to place on top alongside the Target Bullseye dog I printed to make a cupcake topper.

Favor:  I got a bit excited with my party favors and did a few different ones instead of just one.  I started with a Dollar Store bin where guests could pick from the items and take what they want.  I found these items in the Target dollar bin all for under $1.50.  Guest could choose candles, a ceramic letter, a crafty project, or other small items.

The Target manager gave me popcorn bags, so I filled them with popcorn for guests and placed them in the Target basket.  I created a funny Target receipt to attach to the bag.

I also bought Bullseye cookies from Target as a favor.  They are just too cute to resist, and already individually wrapped which makes it easy.

This was a fun theme and fairly easy to put together with a little help from my local Target!