Even though my business is solely focused on organizing and executing lovely people's nuptials, one thing you may not know about me is I should probably star on that show "Party Mama's", but maybe alter it to "Party Mama's on a Budget" since there is no way I am blowing my mortgage on a big bash!
I absolutely love theme parties, and once I pick a theme I go all out, and it's a force that cannot be contained! A lot of people ask where this obsession with theme parties comes from and I finally realized, I got it from my momma! My mom always put some serious effort into holidays and birthday's. I vividly remember my sister Meagan's panda themed birthday party: it was 1988 and the Giant Panda's were being lent to the Calgary Zoo from China and my mom took that and went with it. I remember the Panda cake and ice cream, games and masks, I just thought it was so awesome, we had THE coolest parties ever. I don't know if my mom realized how much this meant to us, and apparently helped me choose my career path, if not, thanks ma. I hope Brookie loves all her parties just as much as I loved mine and all my sisters', who knows, maybe she'll be my partner in party crime one day!
Last weekend I was honored to host the monthly ladies "book club" (see: ladies drinking copious amounts of wine, eating delicious food and acting like we just got fake ID's). It is always hosts choice for what book we will be reading and I took full advantage of this privilege and made it a Twilight Party - that's right, yours truly is a major Twi-hard. Thank you in advance to my fellow Twi-hard friend Danielle of Death by Shoes and Chelsea of Shutterbird Photography for most of these wonderful pictures, Chels - the food pictures actually made my tummy grumble!
When I first decided on this theme I searched far and wide on the wonderful world wide web for a classy and creepy way to celebrate my favorite vampires and werewolves. Thank goodness for the queen of theme parties Hostess with the Mostess for her delightful Twilight Party post . It really got the blood flowing (like that? ha ha...) and the ideas just fogged up my mind for weeks before the big bash.
First on my agenda were the apples. I sent Josh to the store to pick up "the shiniest, most Twilightiest apples you can find". He was so nervous about this ever so important mission that he came home with a huge bag of Red Delicious as well as a huge bag of Spartans, both very pleasing to me, such a gem that guy is.
I hosted this party at a perfect time of year, the Halloween decor is on sale and there was Christmas stuff coming out as well - I found thick, wired satin ribbon which I weaved into my blinds and draped over the table to re-create the look of the cover on Eclipse. I places the apples everywhere, in vases with floating candles and water, up my front steps, and in the sangria I made - danger juice! There were candles everywhere to create a classy but haunting appearance and frames the quotes that HWTM provided.
Now, the food, a very important item to the book club. I did a lot of googling and research into what foods were mentioned in the Twilight series. My first find was mushroom ravioli, so I homemade (I will NEVER do that again!) them the night before and fried them up in a sage brown butter. I also made lasagna, Caesar salad, garlic bread, red velvet cupcakes with both blood splattered and sparkly cream cheese icing and vampire bite cookies! I have to say, the red velvet cupcakes were a hit, and I will certainly be making those again, yum!
The success of a theme party is dependant on how dedicated you are to it, and most are created starting from one single object or colour and then expand from there, in this case a simple apple.
I hope everyone had a safe and happy Halloween and yes, we did discuss Team Edward and Team Jacob and came up with a very sensible solution - Edward in the summer to keep you cool and Jacob in the winter to keep you warm. We're such intellectuals!
