Girls Gone Wild - African Safari

I have been hosting Monthly Dinners for over 15 years now, and sometimes it is a bit of a challenge to come up with a new theme.  It was the Friday before my Monday dinner when my friend and colleague asked me what my theme was.  When I said, I wasn’t sure and asked if she had any ideas, she started naming a few great ideas, but they happen to be themes I had already done.  Then, she mentioned an African Safari which got my mind thinking of all the fun things I could do with that.  On top of my ideas, my friend had African decor from her trips to Africa and from gifts from her daughter who lived there for ten years that she offered to loan me.  Perfect!

Invite:  The decor from my friend was very authentic and beautiful, so I wanted my invitation to be classy as well.  There are a lot of safari invitations that are cutesy and made for baby’s 1st birthdays.  That is not what I wanted.  I found a background design online that was more sophisticated and added my party details.  I downloaded safari-related fonts, Cute Animal & Animal House, to use for my text.

Party Decor:  Isn’t this table decor beautiful!  My friend won first place for this setting at the fair, and you can definitely see why!  I love the pattern of the tablecloth with the safari animals along the edges.  Even more amazing, is that it was hand painted! 

For the centerpiece, I placed the loaned zebra and giraffe masks on unlit candles to keep them standing.  At the center, was a African continent wall piece that I set down.

The animals and gorgeous candles also added to the centerpiece to really make the theme come alive.

For the place setting, my friend loaned me these amazing chargers and plates.

Cloth napkins and carved wood napkin rings with African animals on them were another beautiful touch to the table scape (you see why she won first place now, huh?).  She even had silverware to tie into the theme.

For place cards, I bought some fake leaves from Michaels Craft Store and used a Posca pen to write each guest’s name on a leaf.  I bought a container of African Safari animals from Five Below, and pulled out the larger ones to set next to each leaf.

On my drink/appetizer table, I used another amazing mask and African statue from my friend.

The container of safari animals I bought for the placecards also came with small red and yellow safari animals that I used as wine charms.  I used thin fishing line to attach an animal to each glass.  The beautiful glasses were another loan from my friend, and they were perfect for this theme.

Menu:  Africa is best known for the “Big 5” referring to the water buffalo, rhino, lion, elephant, and the leopard.  I wanted to incorporate as many of these into my menu as possible.  I decided to create a Safari Map to showcase my menu and fit with the theme.

Our first “stop” on the Safari Menu Map was the “watering hole.”  At this stop I highlighted the rhino.  One of my wine labels read, "You're Such a Rhino Wino" with a photo of a rhino drinking from a bottle of wine.  The white wine bottle read, "Wanna Wine about it? I'm all ears" with a photo of an elephant, the glass of wine in his trunk.

The second stop of our menu safari was the Cheese-tah Lowlands.  I cut a block of mid cheddar cheese into cubes and put them on a toothpick.  I made a cheetah print flag to add to the top.

Next was the main dish in the Water Buffalo Chicken & Potato plains.  When trying to come up with a menu item to go with the water buffalo, all I could think of was something with buffalo chicken.  I looked up recipes, and I found this interesting recipe for a buffalo chicken and potato casserole.  It was really good.  We all really liked it, and it is something I will definitely make again.

The fourth stop on the safari menu was the Elephant Valley.  Here I served watermelon chucks and cut a watermelon to look like an elephant head.  Didn't have blueberries to use for eyes, but cutting bits of watermelon from the rind worked perfectly.

The fifth stop I called the Grazing Greens which was a simple green salad.  I served a mixture of spinach and romaine lettuce with hard boiled egg, tomatoes, and sunflower seeds.

The final stop of our safari was at the Zebra Grasslands - a sweet Savannah.  One of my best friends works for Small Cakes, and she offered to make this zebra cake for me.  She made white and chocolate cake mix,  poured them alternatively into the pans, swirled them, and then baked them.  It turned out exactly like a zebra coat!  It was tasty too.  

She put vanilla buttercream frosting on the outside of the cake, and we made some chocolate shavings from a Hershey bar to adorn the top.

Favor: As a parting favor, I made tiger and leopard pretzel sticks. Super simple to make as I dipped half the sticks in orange candy melts and the other half in yellow.  Once that layer was dry, I melted dark chocolate candy melts which I used to drizzle on the orange sticks and piped spots on the yellow ones.

Special thanks to my friend Joan for making this dinner theme possible with all her amazing decorations & table settings. This was probably one of the best tablescapes I have ever had.

Road Trip USA: Navigating the Northeast

My family just completed a month long road trip visiting the Northeastern states - 21 to be exact!  It was a great trip, and we created amazing memories visiting historical landmarks, hiking in national and state parks, visiting family, and just enjoying time together.  We just got back at midnight Friday, so Monday came quickly for this monthly dinner! A bit stressful getting it all together, but a great time catching up with friends and sharing parts of our vacation.

Invite:  Of course the invitation was red, white, and blue for this theme of traveling the US.  I added some graphics of the more popular national landmarks that we saw on the trip to the invite as well.

Decor:  I really only had one day to prepare for this dinner, so my decorations stayed simple.  I decorated my dinner table with patriotic decorations I already had and souvenirs we bought on our vacation.  My husband loves to buy pint glasses from various places, so I used those.   I also added the 3 ornaments I purchased on our trip and a few of the magnets.

One of the places we visited on our trip was the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden were we saw the iconic cherry/spoon fountain.  Had to have a little fun with a photo.

I decided to recreate this for my place cards.  At first, my plan was to make a cherry out of red chocolate so it would be edible.  However, I could not find a chocolate mold that would work.  I bought two off Amazon, but one was massive (like a mini apple), and the other was tiny (like a pea)!  Instead, I used a real cherry and just hot glued them on to plastic silver spoons I bought at the dollar store.

I also used some of the many magnets we purchased on our trip to place on the napkins.

Above my drink table, I used a silver United States map I already owned and cut each of the 21 states we visited out of cardstock to place on it.  This took some time, but wasn't too difficult. I probably could have used my Cricut, but I was worried about matching up with how the states are drawn on the metal sign.

When we first started traveling with our kids, we started collecting pressed pennies.  The kids love trying to find these machines in the places we travel, and they take turns "pressing" the penny.  I love that this is a super inexpensive souvenir! We have the pennies from our vacations all in a jar on our travel mantle.  I decided to use a few of the pressed pennies from our trip as wine charms.  I glued them to cardstock and attached them.

When we visited George Washington's home at Mount Vernon in Virginia, we saw his vineyard and grounds.  We purchased a bottle of Mount Vernon red wine when we were there, and since we didn't drink it on our trip, it made a perfect beverage for this dinner.  We didn't purchase any white wine on our vacation in the northeast, so I just served a general white wine.

In addition to wine, I also had Sam Adams Boston Lager.  We are all wine drinkers, so the 6-pack went untouched for the night, but a couple of the guests took one home.

Menu:  My menu consisted of some of the most iconic foods from a few of the states we visited.  We started with an appetizer of Wisconsin Cheese Curds.  YUM!  I made these in my air fryer and served them with ranch and ketchup.  I used this recipe.  These take time to bread, but once that is done, the air fryer makes cooking and clean up easy.  I created a tag for each menu item, and incorporated a popular slang phrase from that state/city.  For the Wisconsin Cheese Curds, I used the phrase "yous guys."

For the main dish, I served Philly Cheesesteak Hoagies.  These were also easy to make and tasty.  I cut up the green peppers and onions early in the day and marinated the meat more than the 20 minutes the recipe calls for just so I could have a few more things done ahead of time.  In Philly, locals also use the word "youse," so I included that word on my menu tag for these hoagies.

Of course, french fries go great with Philly Cheesesteaks, and a popular food in Delaware is vinegar fries.  I have been using my air fryer to make fries for my family lately, but since I was using that for the cheese curds and this was a large batch of fries, I decided to use the oven instead.  These Salt and Vinegar fries worked out great.  I sliced the potatoes earlier in the day and kept them in water. Then just prepped them quickly and stuck them in the oven to bake.

For dessert, I made a Boston Cream Pie.  I haven't made this type of pie before, but the recipe was pretty straightforward.  It is a bit more time consuming to make than some other desserts.  I made it the night before the dinner and then assembled it the morning of the dinner.  Representing Boston, I had to call it "wicked good" for my menu tag.

Favor:  My kids LOVE to collect the sample bottles of shampoo and conditioner from the hotels on our trip.  My son's suitcase was practically full of them by the end of this vacation.  I decided to use these to create a fun and funny favor for our dinner.  I gave each guest a shampoo and a conditioner from one of our stops.  I created a tag that read, "Hotel Greetings from _____" and picked one of the cities we stayed overnight in on this trip to fill in the blank.  I also added a "Thanks for Coming. Love you!" message to the tag, but replaced the word love with the iconic love statue that started in Philly.  

While it was a bit crazy and a little stressful to pull off a monthly dinner only a couple days after returning from vacation, I haven't missed a month of these dinners in 14 years, so I didn't want to miss now!  Plus I got to see my amazing friends.  A win win to top off a fabulous vacation! 

Hello to the Heartland

My family just returned from a 3-week road trip exploring some of the Midwestern states.  It was a lot of driving, but such a great family experience.  We love road trips, and my 5, 8, and 10 year old do great with them. This year, we hit a total of 17 states!  California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Kansas, tip of Oklahoma and Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. I love a travel theme, and since I got back two days before my dinner party, Hello to the Heartland seemed like a good theme.

Invite:  I designed the invite on Photoshop and highlighted one landmark from some of the states we visited.  Nothing too fancy for the invite, just straightforward info.

Decor:  For my table decor, I chose to use tablecloths and napkins that matched the red, yellow, and blue of the invitation.  For the centerpiece, I used some souvenir items from our trip as well as some things I found around the house.

Kansas is the Sunflower State, so I bought some beautiful sunflowers to place in a mason jar.  Next to it I set my 5-year old daughter's duck boat souvenir from Wisconsin Dells.

I made a St. Louis arch with a pool noodle and some wood.  My husband made the wood piece with pegs on each side.  We spray-painted the base green and the noodle silver and slid it on the pegs to make it stay.  I borrowed my son's Field of Dreams souvenir hat with a baseball and ear of corn to represent Iowa.  My daughter's Nashville shirt and toy horse to represent Tennessee and the hundreds of horses we saw on farms.

When in Kentucky, we toured the Louisville Slugger factory.  These are the mini bats they gave us at the end of the tour as well as a magnet I purchased.

My aunt and uncle gave my son this hat when we visited them in Indiana. Added another ear of corn to represent this state as well.

For place cards, I designed postcards from some of our favorite spots we visited.  I thought it would be easy to find current postcards with Google images, but it was actually not as easy as I thought.  I did have to design them.  Instead of just "Greetings from Nashville" as a normal postcard might say, I needed to add the guest's name.  I used Photoshop to change it to "Michelle sends Greetings from Nashville" or sayings similar to this.

I set up my drink and appetizer table with this metal United States.  I bought it to use on my wall of travel photos.  Just added a heart near some of the heartland states.

I printed out state shapes to use as both napkin decor and wine charms.  Nothing fancy.

I had fun making the wine labels to match this trip.  My family visited both Churchill Downs and Wrigley Field, so I used these as inspiration.  "I'll have Another" won the Kentucky Derby in 2012, and it just seemed like a fun name to use for a word play.

My family also visited both the Miller Brewery in Milwaukee for a tour as well as the Budweiser brewery in St. Louis to see the Clydesdale horses.  I don't usually serve beer at these dinners, but since it was part of my Heartland vacation, I decided to serve both.

Menu:  For the menu, I wanted to try to serve the most popular food from each state we visited.  We started with Wisconsin cheese.  I found Wisconsin cheese sticks at the grocery and cut them into cubes. 

I also served Toasted Ravioli - a favorite in Missouri.  I bought frozen ravioli and then dipped them in egg wash and breadcrumbs before frying them and adding a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese.  So good.

Many states in the Midwest are known for barbecue, so it was easy to choose the main dish.  To represent Kansas, we had BBQ chicken with Kansas City sauce.

Corn is a huge crop in the Heartland, and it goes great with BBQ, so I served small ears of corn to represent Iowa.

Chicago is well-known for deep dish pizza, but it didn't quite fit with the BBQ and corn.  I stretched the most popular foods for this side dish and went with baked beans to symbolically represent the Bean at Cloud Gate in Chicago.

There are so many great desserts to choose from. I almost made Hoosier Pie, a favorite in Indiana, but decided to make moon pies from Tennessee.  These looked so cute when I first made them right before the party.  Unfortunately, by they time I served them the marshmallow had melted a bit.  If you make these, keep them in the frig or pipe the marshmallow on right before for a better look.  They were really good regardless.  Here's the recipe I used.

Favor:  You can't do a road trip in the Midwest without seeing cornfields, so I decided corn would be my favor.  I popped some popcorn and put it in a Ziploc baggie. I taped the closure of the bag to hide it in the back and wrapped a piece of green tissue paper around the bag for the husk.  Make sure you tape the baggie to the tissue paper a bit so it stays where you want it. I twisted the bottom and tied it with string; then made a silly tag to go with it.

We had a great time.  Can't wait to hear what you thought of this party theme and it's details!