Halloween Party Prep

Halloween is by far my favorite time of the year. I love it. For me, Halloween isn't a single day about getting candy. It's a whole season of creating and creativity! Every year, my husband and I host a Halloween party and I can't wait for it to get here this year (only 39 days left!)

Whenever I see websites like this with adorable tablescapes like that over to the right... I really really want to emulate them. Does that make me a middle aged housewife? I hope not. I'm not ready for that.

But really, how cute does that look?! I'm going to try to make something like that this year. I'm going to go ahead and brain-dump here so I remember what I'm thinking for my Halloween party setup this year.

Dining room:
This is going to be the main area for food. I'm thinking I'd like to keep it black and orange, kind of like that picture up there. Hot foods, appetizers, snacks. No desserts.

Kitchen:
This is the drink station. I'm sort of thinking a Halloween-glam, New Orleans voodoo, type of theme to the area. Sort of like what you see to the left, from this blog. Lots of glitter, glam, feathers, chandeliers.

What's nice is that these two stations won't totally clash with each other. We have an open floor plan in the house, so the kitchen and dining room pretty much open up into each other.

Last but not least...

The Basement:
I want to do the whole basement like a zombie apocalypse safe room. Quarantine signs. Biohazard tape. Yellow and black.

Oddly, I'm not seeing anyone that has done any sort of quarantine, zombie, or biohazard tablescapes for Halloween yet. Come on, bloggers! Zombies are SO 2013!!! Let's do this! I guess I'm on my own planning this area out. That's okay, I can do it. I know it. I'll be sure to post pictures as I craft and try out recipes.

Cheers, lovely monsters!

Pinterest Party: Harry Potter Theme

If you haven't heard of a Pinterest party, they're super easy to put together and a ton of fun! How often do you have a hundred recipes on your Pinterest and realize you will never have time to try them all? Host a Pinterest party with friends and you can knock out more than a few. I'm going to tell you how we do it, but feel free to tweak the steps to work for you.

1. Create a group board on pinterest. Ours is here. When anyone posts, I ask them to tag the pin with the date of the party.

2. Choose a craft and pin it to the board. Pick something that will amount to ~$10 per person - nothing too expensive or too cheap. Nothing too crazy either. Try to avoid anything that will require long drying times, a ton of prep, etc...

3. Ask everyone invited to the party to pin a recipe to the board - and don't forget to do it yourself, too! You could even pick a theme for your party (holidays, movies, etc). Everyone should prepare their recipe and bring it to the party.

4. Get the supplies for crafting and get everything setup for the guests. Collect $10 from each guest, repay yourself, and keep an envelope for next time if there's any leftovers.

5. Eat your delicious food and make crafts!!!

Sounds fun, right? 

Recently I hosted a Harry Potter Pinterest Party for some friends and I and I wanted to share some of my favorite recipes with you!

Our craft was making wands, so I had my dining room table setup with all the different materials needed. I got the idea for the craft from here and even though we aren't kids anymore, I think everyone had a lot of fun. Oh, I forgot to mention in the steps above... Make sure you get a bottle of wine (or two!) to share with the pinners! It makes it more fun, especially if you end up with a "nailed it" moment.

You can check my Pinterest board that I pinned above, but I want to take a moment to highlight my absolute favorite recipes that we tried. First of all, this is the BEST homemade butterbeer I have ever had in my life. The recipe is posted to the board, but check here because I think some of the text is cut off. 

Next up, I had a chance to make Mrs Weasley's Rock Cakes. Mine didn't look quite as good as the ones in the picture on the recipe, but they were really tasty and not too sweet! I would love to make these again sometime, because they were just so easy. I do want to point out that they expand A LOT, so make sure you leave plenty of room between them on the pan, and smaller globs of the dough are better.

I'm not sure what we'll do for our next Pinterest Party, but if you have any theme ideas please post them here! Maybe something related to spring... Who knows!

How To: Pokemon Party

GIRL! How many times must I tell you?!

To have a successful Pokemon Party, you need to have a couple of elements. First of all, no party is complete without a delicious menu. And of course a Pokemon Party is no different...

On our menu was stuffed Pidgey burgers, pulled Piginite tacos, mesquite style BBQ Spearow balls, Moon Stone cookies, Krustle brownies, Bulbasaur salad, Pokemon jell-o shots, and various themed mixed drinks courtesy of The Drunken Moogle. I can't wait to have another one of these parties so we can figure out some more recipes to try. I know eating Pokemon is wrong, but I like to think that no Pokemon were harmed in the making of this party.

Lori with a jell-o shot.

We started up the evening by watching Pokemon: The First Movie. I think that without the beligerent comments throughout the whole film, I would have definitely cried during that final battle scene... Still a beautiful movie. Maybe it's just the nostalgia talking, but you can't help but love the story of Mew and Mewtwo. 

One of my favorite elements to themed parties is making everyone encouraging my beautiful and wonderful friends to dress up. I love Halloween, so any time I can add that element to other areas of my life is a win for me! So we had a few different Pikachu hats, a homemade Mew hat courtesy of a friend of mine, and an Ash Ketchum inspired hat. I can't even remember what shirts everyone was wearing, but they were, of course, Pokemon inspired.

If you're thinking this is the nerdiest thing you've read all day... You should have heard the conversations during the movies about the propulsion systems of Staryus and gendered versus genderless legendary Pokemon. I wish I could remember more of the debates we had, but I just can't. If I think of any, maybe I'll write a post and we can get some Pokedebates up in this blog.

That's a Wartortle mixed drink.

The Accidental Superbowl Party

Getting the beer ready while we wait for
the cable to come back...

I know I'm a week late in posting this, but I think it's important enough and will continue to be relevant enough to touch on.

My husband and I differ in our definitions of clean. I have a lot of house pride, and he... Can tolerate mess. Now, I definitely don't think I'm one of those crazy women that has to have a model home at all times. The dishes in the sink right now imply otherwise. But I like to keep the house at a certain level, and here's a real world lesson in why...

We were invited to a Superbowl party last weekend. We showed up about a half hour before kickoff and noticed immediately that everyone was sitting around a TV with a "no signal" message floating around the screen.

"So uh... What's up?"

Comcast was having an outage. During the Superbowl.

Stephanie's football whoopie pies! (Delicious!)

Yep... So that was interesting. After waiting a bit for things to clear up, and the game starting in the meantime... We needed to think of a plan B. Few people suggested some local bars, but with all the drinks and food that had been prepared, that wasn't really an option.

"Well, you can all come back to my house...?" Only a slight cringe. We had vaccuumed... So that was something. But still, there were a few people that would be coming to my home that had never been. I hoped that the mess wouldn't be too bad. No tumbleweeds of cat fur in the kitchen. No weird stains on the carpet.

Send Husband ahead to double-check that the cable was fine. Of course, the Ravens got a touchdown as he called and that was enough to get everyone's butts in gear. We were only 10 minutes down the road, but we still had to transport a few crockpots and cookies.

So all in all - we had a good party. No one noticed that the house wasn't 100%. But it got me thinking... How many more times are we going to have accidental parties?

So I've heard about party boxes that people keep with all of the elements needed for a successful accidental party. Plates, cups, soda, maybe some games, snacks, etc...

If you have any tips for what you would keep in your party box... Post it here!