Animals in the Park

This weekend I enjoyed a sweet day in Central Park, NYC celebrating my girlfriend's new baby!  It was a wonderfully casual gathering of friends for a potluck picnic under the guise of a baby shower!

The mommy-to-be loves animals so we made sure to include little animal details here and there.  I picked up some balloons so fellow guests could easily find our little party under some shade trees and weighed them down with a couple of cute stuffed animals for the baby.

One of my favorite, easiest ways to add a festive pop and tie in a theme is with custom party stickers!!  I have mentioned them in previous posts and made some more for this special occasion with little animal characters plus the occasion and date.  The stickers were used to make custom food picks, straws, and decorate the favor bags!  One of the talented guests baked up some large animal shaped cookies for yummy favors for us to take home, slipping each one inside a clear cello bag sealed with a party sticker.

My contribution to the potluck was an easy riff on a cheese platter: kabob style perfect for picking up and sharing!  I combined green grapes with white cheddar cheese cubes and cherry tomatoes with mini mozzarella balls rolled in herbs on skewers - yum!  Other potluck items were egg salad sandwiches, pulled pork sandwiches, fresh berries, cupcakes, and a homemade apple pie.  Plus there were three different types of pickles, in case someone was having a craving...

The mommy's sister-in-law strung up a clothes line between the trees and handed out colorful baby t-shirts and onesies on clipboards for us to decorate with iron-set crayons.  Everyone had a lot of fun designing the new little baby's wardrobe!!

They all came out adorable and the parents-to-be voted on their favorites for prizes! My penguin design was a special request from the mommy-to-be so I was a shoe in!

A little game we played was guess how many animal crackers in the big baby bottle... would you believe 287 fit in there!?!  And the winner was......... the mommy-to-be!

*POP*

Recently we went to a housewarming party hosted by the lovely Claire of my favorite blog, Gibson King!  She was so excited to try out some new recipes for her latest obsession: gourmet popcorn!!  So as a hostess gift I brought her some lovely chevron (her other obsession!) glassine bags I ordered from my new go to online supply store, The Sugar Diva.

They worked out perfectly and guests snatched them up, munching on Claire's delicious creations - including this one featured recently on her blog!  Now I'm thinking of some other fun things to use these bags for... veggie frites, nut clusters, cinnamon sugar tortilla strips...

Roaring 20's

You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone. - Al Capone

A bunch of us recently threw one of our best friend's a 30th birthday party in homage to her Roaring 20's! We had a great time researching one of the best decades ever and turning one of our houses into a retro Speakeasy! Invites included 20's slang and the Speakeasy password!

The spring off point was a vintage photo of a 1920's party decorated in streamers which we replicated in the dining room! We kept a simple black/ white/ silver theme running throughout all the little touches including feathers, flowers and fringe curtains. Other fun accents included squirt guns lying about and fake bullet holes in the walls... but of course we posted a sign "All Firearms Must Be Checked At The Door"! However, the best decoration of all was everyone's fabulous costumes including flappers, bootleggers and gangsters! And with a bit of photoshop, a friend made an Al Capone style "Wanted" poster featuring the birthday girl as the outlaw of the hour!

Lots of research went into the appetizers for this party. Aside from the requisite "Bathtub Gin", "Hooch", and "Giggle Water"... we served up some treats either invented or made popular in the 1920's including:

• Peanut Butter & Jam Sandwiches
• Pineapple Upside Down Cake
• Jell-o
  
• Ice Cream Sandwiches
• Charleston Chews, Milk Duds, Gummi Bears, Twizzlers, Babe Ruth Bars, Reese's PB Cups

One of the hostess's got crafty and made fun food picks out of vintage head shots of 1920's party goers wishing a Happy Birthday!

Also, a friend whipped up some chocolate covered pretzel rod "cigarettes and cigars" featured on silver trays at 1920's prices.

With everyone dressed up it was a great excuse to set up a photo booth! We hung some fabric and hired a friend to snap goofy photos of the guests using props like an inflatable saxophone, a chalkboard, sparkly glasses, boas, and the most popular: homemade felt mustaches glued on dowel handles. Everyone (including me of course) hammed it up and loved it!

Once Bitten

I try not to drink too much because when I am drunk, I bite! - Bette Midler

I LOVE today's post on Gibson King! It's all about "Little Bites" and whenever I am dreaming up a party menu, I am obsessed with bite-sized options!! Balancing a plate, fork, knife, and the ever present cocktail glass is tricky stuff! So unless you are having a sit-down dinner or have a bunch of picnic tables - you want to keep people movin' and minglin' - not hunched over their laps sawing into something! I collect cookbooks that feature appetizers, hors d'oeuvres, nibbles, etc. but sometimes I just like to wing it too. My mini muffin pan is an indispensable tool for this and I came up with a fast, savory treat that you can pop in your mouth in between sips of your cocktail...

Ham and Cheese Bites: Simply take crescent roll dough and combine two triangles to make a square. Then cut that square into 4 equal squares. Spray the muffin pan with non-stick spay and press a square into a into each cup. Then fill each one about halfway with chopped up ham and shredded cheese. At this point you can either flare out the corners or fold them over to meet at the center. Pop them in the oven according to dough directions, but they might take a little longer, so keep an eye on them until the are a bit golden. These can be as casual or as fancy as the ingredients you use! For brunch use sausage crumbles and sharp cheddar! For the big game use roast beef and swiss!

Sassy Soiree

Birthdays she believed, were no time to exercise restraint. - Ann Taintor

One of my best friends is a real firecracker, so when my girlfriends and I were hosting a birthday party for her, we were inspired by artist Ann Taintor and her retro women with their sassy thoughts! What’s more retro than the clinking of glasses and the sampling of treats at a home-spun cocktail dinner party?  We decided to incorporate Ann Taintor’s style into the décor but with a personalized twist: we would make posters featuring our best friend’s picture in place of the 40’s women! Through Adobe Photoshop, one of my fellow hostesses was able to doctor up the photos to make them look more like retro illustrations and we matched them with A.T.’s funny quotes that reminded us of our feisty best friend!

To help my apartment look even more festive, I wanted to craft something with very little effort and a lot of impact. After Googling vintage party images, I re-discovered paper chains! I flipped through my stack of outdated magazines and picked out the most color saturated advertisements and articles. A few hundred recycled strips and staples later, and it looked like a party!

We knew we wanted to serve our guests dinner, but we also wanted to maintain the cocktail party vibe. So we scaled down some classic dinner foods and combined them with retro hors d’ oeuvres! A major source of recipes and ideas was http://www.epicurious.com/ which features great menus and a wide range of recipes for all skill levels and tastes. Another factor for us to consider in our menu selection was that this party would be on a chilly fall evening so we wanted to provide hearty fare as well as seasonal produce. One of my other fellow hostesses combined all of these ideas into one fantastic menu: We served Mac & Cheese Cupcakes, Swedish Meatballs with Cranberry Compote, Velveeta Salsa Dip, Spinach Onion Dip, Deviled Eggs and a delicious Fall Harvest Salad with a variety of apples, pears, grapes, pomegranate seeds, sunflower seeds, and walnuts! When serving up our feast we used lots of crock pots and pretty dishes. We also provided fun (pom-poms!) cocktail picks and Ann Taintor cocktail napkins for an added retro cocktail flair!


One of my favorite things to do is create a Signature Cocktail for parties. This one was inspired by both the retro theme and the Fall Harvest menu. I modified Martha Stewart’s recipe and combined 1 part chilled Sparkling Apple Cider, 1 part chilled Pear Nectar and 1 part Spiced Rum. An apothecary jar with some ice provided the perfect dispenser! For how to set up the perfect party ready bar, check out this past post: Raise the Bar For extra fun, I picked up some old time hard candies that reminded me of the ones my Grandmother always had out and filled up a vintage candy jar (garage sale find!) for guests to enjoy!