Snowman Dinner Party

After a recent winter storm I went for a walk in the park and was inspired by all the sparkly snow and icicles. I wanted to bring some of the outdoors in and have a party with some snowmen! 

To "build" the snowman bowls: attach two white bowls end to end with sticky florists clay. The scarves were made by cutting one inexpensive scarf into several smaller scarves. For the face I experimented with cutting shapes out of adhesive backed foam sheets to get the right size. Once cut out you can just stick them in place.

          

On the table, fake snow, snowflakes, pine trees, and candles were arranged to create a winter centerpiece.

To bring icicles into the scene, the chandelier was decorated with icicle ornaments and fake snow. It really felt like there were icicles dangling from above!

You gotta have soup when it's cold outside! To balance it out we also had a strawberry salad and garlic bread. I cheated with the cookies and just bought them from Starbucks. The donut snowmen had orange tictacs for noses and mini chocolate chips for the rest of the face. 

For the hats: cut out a hat shape from sparkly black foam. Add some red paper to look like the hat ribbon and hand write each guest's name in black marker on the red paper. Now you can attach the hat to a tall place card holder so that it looks like your snowmen are wearing hats!

Tea Time With Pooh and Friends

Tea Time Menu:
Owl's Story Book Sandwiches
Pooh's Smackeral of Honey with Scones
Rabbit's Garden Fresh Vegetables and Lady Bug Friends
Tigger's Tails
Kanga & Roo's Chocolate Chip Cookies
Piglet's Pink Lemonade
Eeyore's Rain Cloud Pour
Christopher Robin's Tea

Owls' story book sandwiches were pin wheels and crackers with deli meat, cheese, tomato slices, and fresh spinach.

The lady bug friends were made from halved strawberries with mini chocolate chips poked in for the spots and grapes for the head.

For Rabbit's garden fresh vegetables put some veggie dip in the bottom of a dixie cup. Then add sugar snap peas into the dip standing on end. Place the dixie cups into small terra-cotta pots and you have individual garden appetizers.

You can make very inexpensive "Hunny" pots from small glass vases. I purchased these from a local dollar store and then painted the outside. To get the look of the spilled honey over the side of the pot, get messy! You can use globs of paint and let it drip down the sides. If it's a little thick even better - it will look more realistic.

       

For super easy clean up and to get a mix of bright colors, I used colorful paper plates.  To designate each place setting I painted small honey comb shaped boxes from the craft store. Inside each box was a "bit o' honey" candy.                                                                                                 

Sweet Seventeen Cinderella Birthday Party!

My daughter had a Cinderella Party when she was 5 in which she dressed up as her favorite princess and had a wonderful time! When she told me that she wanted to have a Cinderella themed dinner for her 17th birthday, I knew we would need something a bit more grown up than what we had done previously - but still fun and very princess-y!

To create the tablescape, we purchased an old Disney pumpkin carriage (I think it used to hold a child's toy tea set) from a second hand store and painted it gold and white to look more like the real carriage. 









To get the horse drawn carriage look, I started searching for inexpensive hobby horses but I quickly found out that they tend to be a bit on the pricey side (especially for a table center piece). I ended up purchasing a couple of 3-D wooden horse puzzles (for $1 each from a local craft store), and my daughter painted them white. Then I glued some feathers to their heads. Now we had our noble steeds to pull off the theme.


To add a royal chandelier, I used some icicle Christmas decorations and white flowers, and bent the ends of the stems to hang them from our dining room light fixture.




Since her birthday is in October, we created a menu that went with the theme and also utilized produce of the season. I like to display a menu at our gatherings,  tea parties, and dinners to help create the mood. Usually I will start with something that will be the centerpiece and then decide which dishes will go with it well. I added names of the characters from the story to the dishes, printed off the menu, and used some old scrap-booking supplies to create another element on the table.

Our menu consisted of:

Pumpkin carriage soup
Jacque and Gus' Salad
King's fish
Prince Charming's Potatoes
Fairy Godmother's Sparkling Cider
Royal Lemon Cake

To help create the atmosphere we chose the color scheme of blue, white, and gold. I had some gold pumpkins in my Thanksgiving Decorations and used gold charges with glass plates and champagne glasses. I purchased small "glass slippers" from a local party store (in the bridal shower area) and added a runner of light blue netting with a slight sparkle.Continuing the "Royal Treatment", gold Christmas wrapping paper was used for all of her gifts.

Even though she is seventeen, my daughter still wanted to dress up a little bit. She wore a pretty blue top and some "glass slippers".