real party: oscars/old hollywood

I mentioned awhile back that I was working on a Spring Formal event.  I have waited to post about it in hopes of gathering pictures from others put I haven't tracked many down yet.  I have a few pictures that I took (I never get many pictures at my parties) that will have to work for the moment.

I was on a fairly tight budget which isn't always fun but does make you get creative.  It also makes you think about the creative talents of friends.  When planning for the outside decor of the venue I called in many a favor from talented friends and family members.

I started by asking a good friend of mine, Herk Wright to help me out.  Herk is the one that remodeled my kitchen in our old house - the kitchen that we redid and than a year later moved from :(  He did amazing work, check it out...

Here is the before

and a few after shots

Herk did an amazing job, right?  If you are in the Orange County, California area and are looking to do some upgrades to your home let me know and I'll pass along Herk's number to you.  

But back to the party...Herk was kind enough to say yes to me when I asked him if he could make me 4 large wood frames.  His 4 frames along with 4 smaller ones I purchased at Aaron Brothers was all I needed to get started on my first project.

I made a few measurements and then drilled holes into the frames.   Here is a shot of one of the Aaron Brother frames getting drilled. 

Once all the holes were drilled all the frames got a few coats of some silver metallic spray paint.  Once dry I inserted some white ball lights that I picked up at Target.

The part I really loved though was the 1930's inspired artwork, my nephew Sam Ricks created, that went in the frames.  Sam is amazing!  You can check out his work on his blog and website.  In some of the pictures further down you can see the 4 designs he made - each one represented the city that the youth attending the Formal were from.

The outside of the venue (below) all put together and waiting the arrival of the kids.  The event was held at Soka University - can I just say what a beautiful campus this is.

To finish off the look of the entrance I called in another favor from an artist friend, Steve Ogren.  He created these massive academy styled statues for me out of cardboard, paint and sequins.  I love them!  I actually have them sitting in my front room at the moment while I figure out a place to store them.  Nothing like walking into someone's home and being greeted by an 8ft sequined man.

This last shot isn't great but it allows you to see the check-in tables where I used the 4 small frames mentioned earlier.  The frames contained the same posters as the outside they were just smaller in size.  This allowed for easier check-in as the youth could check in at the table from the city they live in.

Most people don't have plans to decorate for a 400+ youth Spring Formal but you can still steal some of these ideas for a party at home.  


The lit signs would be great at your front door welcoming guests to a movie night.  Buy a movie poster or create one of your own on your computer.  All the poster enlargements from this night were done at Costco with their online photo center.  It is easy and inexpensive.  If you haven't checked out all the Costco Photo Center offers you really should.  I use them for parties, school projects and more.

alice in wonderland party idea

I just got this in my inbox.  Thank you Disney Family.com!

Perfect little edible teacups for an Alice in Wonderland party.  Here's the how-to.  


I CAN NOT WAIT for this movie.  Tim Burton and Johnny Depp are movie magic in my book.  Friday can't come soon enough.


For my Alice in Wonderland craft ideas go here.

jane how-to

There have been some questions about my daughter's Jane (Volturi) costume. Here's how to get the Volturi vampire look that we got here.

I used this Simplicity pattern, view A. I shortened the length of the cloak, made the arm width much skinnier and did not use the frog closure that was suggested - I used a length of fabric so that the cloak could be tied up with a bow.

The contacts are from Wild Eyes and the color/style is Red Hot. We ordered them through our optometrist and got them in my daughters prescription.

We also stopped by Hot Topic and picked up the Volturi Crest necklace.

We finished off the costume with white tights, some Mary Janes picked up inexpensively at Ross and make-up -pale skin, dark eyes.

the volturi have arrived - new moon jane costume

Any New Moon fans out there? If so, you may recognize this pint sized vampire who is here visiting from Italy.

My daughter decided to be Jane, the Volturi guards silent secret weapon, for Halloween this year. The costume is not quite done but she was off to a Halloween party tonight so she had to wear it as is.

The sleeves aren't hemmed yet - they're just folded up underneath the sleeve, hence the discrepancy in lengths (that will be fixed before Halloween) I also need to clean up some raw edges around the neckline before the big candy coma induced night.

Most of it's done though and both she and I are pleased with the almost finished product. The eye color makes this costume - I was thrilled we got our hands on some contacts in a short amount of time. I called the optometrist on Monday and we had the contacts on Tuesday so she would have them to wear tonight.
She has plans to get multiple uses out of this costume - she wants to wear it to the theater for the midnight release of New Moon and just stare people down while quietly telling them "this may hurt just a little" Check out the trailer here to see Jane, played by Dakota Fanning, say that line - she's an evil little blood sucker.

Hope every one's Halloween party plans are on track and that you are getting your costumes taken care of as well. I always love to see Halloween parties and costumes so send pictures my way of any of your holiday happenings.

just what dr. cullen ordered

Check out this great label found via flickr to be used on some "blood" candy.  Adding it to my Twilight inspiration.  More Twilight food inspiration can be found here.

why must you be sold out?

I love One Cool Pick - I always find great stuff.  

I ran across this today and want it so desperately for the Twilight movie release party I'm planning but alas, it's sold out!  You can find Edward and other great decals HERE.

I think I'd put him in the bathroom - too inappropriate?!  Perhaps I don't do Edward justice by confining him to the bathroom.  Maybe he would be better on a currently empty wall in my family room.  I can see it now...woman will gather around him while taking pictures and giggling.  What is it with this vampire?

anything from the trolley, my dears

Since I couldn't pull off a big Harry Potter party like I have before I kept it simple and brought the party to the movie line.  

The first few of us got in line at 4 pm and secured the 4th spot in line with the first three spots being small groups of people.  This allowed us to get great seats once inside the theater.  

We spread blankets and chairs out as we waited for the rest of our party to arrive.  By 9 pm all 31 of us (plus a couple friends that came to hang out in line but not go to the movie) were there. Once we were all assembled we ate take out from The Three Broomsticks

A friend of mine spent hours drawing the Dark Mark on most of the teenagers that were with us

We played games - speed Scrabble, Harry Potter Uno, Harry Potter Scene It and more.

It seems that perhaps we need some help with spelling or access to a few more letters

In addition to our Three Broomsticks dinner we ate candy, candy and more candy (have I mentioned yet that the lack of sleep and abundance of candy have made me feel like vomiting?)

Here are the trolley offerings...

The bottom of the basket was filled with muggle candy - an assortment of chocolate bars but they had to stay hidden because muggle packaging just doesn't mix with wizard packaging.

Butterscotch Disks

Cinnamon Disks - I had to throw a little Twilight shout out it into this packaging

Chocolate Covered Macadamia Nuts.  A good friend had just brought these back for me from Hawaii hence the name.

Candy Dots
There was a lot more candy - some that I did packaging for and some that I left as is.  I wish I had more pictures but in our rush to get out the door to get in line I only managed a few pictures.

As for the movie - we loved it!  As always the Harry Potter movies are a visual feast - the set design, costumes, everything are amazing.  The story line was off from the books a bit but I loved it anyway.  I liked the humor in this film.  In my opinion it is a must see.

i'd like to order take out

JUST ADDED APRIL 13, 2010 - you can now download my Three Broomsticks label here.


Another Harry Potter sneak peek (I hope none of the people I'm going with to the movie see these posts - I love keeping stuff like this a surprise)

Since we'll be in line for hours I figured I'd take care of dinner for everyone.  Sitting on the concrete smashed between a million other people waiting to get into the same movie is not conducive to throwing a sit down dinner so I decided to go with the trusty brown bag meal, wizard style.

I have been working on these take out bags from The Three Broomsticks.  The labels are the same process as the Hogwarts Express tickets except that I tea dyed these after printing since they use all black ink.  The label above is just resting on the bag but the finished bags will have the label run through my Xyron machine so that they are secured on the bag really well - one of my pet peeves is labels that are stuck on in only a few spots - I have issues, I know.

Each bag will contain a sandwich, salad, chips, dessert and root beer (packaged as butterbeer) I'm working on packaging for each part of the meal - the chips are proving difficult.  I don't want the current packaging but I'm finding it hard to come up with my own packaging that will contain the chips and keep them from becoming to smashed while still giving me the ability to create what I want.  You'll have to stay tuned to see what I come up with (if I come up with anything)

I'm also working on some sweet treats straight from Honeydukes Sweetshoppe for after dinner. I have done some Honeydukes treats a few years ago for the last book (seen below) but I want to step it up a bit.  

As I get everything done I'll be sure to post pictures.

Thanks to those that have shared ideas - I always love hearing from others about party ideas.  If you know of any good blogs or websites with Harry Potter related party ideas let me know about those as well.  I feel like I have searched the internet high and low and seen every site but I'm sure there are some HP party sites out there that are alluding my muggle senses.

I better get back to work - only 4 days left.

meet me at platform 9 3/4

There is no time in my schedule for a big Harry Potter movie bash but it kills me to not celebrate my favorite boy wizard in some way so I'm putting together a waiting in line party.  

I'm purchasing 29 tickets today for a group of us to attend the midnight showing of Harry Potter on the 15th.  Last night I finished up the Hogwarts Express tickets that each person will get along with their movie ticket.  I'll post pictures of the final packaging/presentation when I'm done.

Tickets done but needing to be cut.  I tea dye paper a lot for various parties.  I always print my info and then tea dye but I learned something this time - anything but black ink bleeds when dyed.  To fix the problem I had to tea dye full sheets of paper before printing.  The highlight of the night was ironing paper on my ironing board because the dying made the paper too wrinkly for the printer. 

Tickets for travel to Hogwarts.

I'm now working on a logo/label for some carry-out dinner bags from The Three Broomsticks. Pictures to follow as soon as I"m done.

If anyone has Harry Potter ideas to share I"d love to hear about them.

movie madness

We all know I love a good party based on a movie or book.  My favorite movie/book themed party to throw is hands down Harry Potter - gotta love the wizard.  I'm still trying to decide if I want to move past my muggleness and throw a party for the movie this summer.  Part of me wants to wait and go big for the last movie.  My last HP shindig was for the final book release a couple years ago and part of me thinks it may still be too fresh in peoples minds.  Any thoughts?

But Harry Potter is not the only thing I'm here to wax philosophical on.  Let's move on to Twilight.  Is it evident yet that I'm not really into serious Academy Award winning movies? Bring on the fantasy and let me create a party based on it.

With two teenage daughters sharing my space you can only imagine the Twilight jive I have occupying my home.  There are at least 10 Stephanie Meyer books keeping residence on book shelves in our home - 4 of them being copies of Twilight - 3 of them because everyone has to read the book at exactly the same time and the 4th because my husband forgot to bring one of the copies with him on a family vacation (after we, the girls, begged him to read it) so of course we had to buy a 4th book.  The cool thing is they are all signed by Stephanie Meyer

The Host book signing where they allowed us to get copies of all her books signed.   

Surprisingly happy girls considering we spent hours waiting to get our books signed.

I'm getting seriously side tracked - back to parties.  So here are my thoughts...hold off on Harry and the crew until the last movie and focus my party planning skills on the November release of New Moon.  I've been wanting to throw a soiree in honor of Bella and Edward for awhile and this November seems to be as good a time as any.  I have to say I love that the movie is being released in November as opposed to a Summer release date - November is a more vampir-y month, don't you think?

While doing some planning and research I ran across this blog today, Tara's Twilight Party. I was excited to find her blog and got an extra bit of yippee when I noticed on her side bar that she had a list of other sites that were Twilight party focused.  I love me some good inspiration.

If you have any good Twilight ideas please feel free to share.  I'm still undecided on a direction to take for the party - do I go vampire?  How about modern like the Cullens home?  Do I set the scene in a meadow?  Do I fly myself and a hundred of my closest friends to Forks and have the bash there?  So many choices.  I'd love to hear what others have done or what you would do if you were throwing a Twilight party.

movie night

How about making a few of these bowls for your next movie night - totally cute, right?  You can find directions for making your own DIY bowl here.

very harry ideas

Even though our home move has me feeling stressed and way busy I keep swirling Harry Potter ideas around for a movie release party for the above mentioned movie.  Did I mention I'm kinda a Harry Potter geek?  Do the movie sets make anyone else's heart race and fill you with an inner desire to fly all your friends to England to hold a shindig in an old magical castle?

Our last HP party for the release of the last book was a ton of fun.  The party was open house style and those of us that wanted to left the party and headed over to Borders for the release of the book.  For the party I did what I could to recreate Hogwarts and various other magical locations.  You can see some pictures that my brother took here.  

Some of my favorites from the party were the wand boxes I made.  One of the activities was making wands and then each person got one of the handmade wand boxes to take their wand home in.  I also liked my Honeydukes candy packaging (I think there is a picture of some of the candy)  Herbology turned out to be a great little food station and I liked the coziness of Divination class.

If anyone has some great Harry Potter ideas please share them here so I can begin planning for our next Harry Hoopla!

needs more butter

Check this soap out!  Yes, soap.  How cute is this?  I want this spilling out on my bathroom counter for our next movie night shindig.  Or for my Halloween party 2010 - CarnEVIL.  Yes, I am working on themes that are still years away.  This popcorn soap is seriously so cute!

Just a little blog lesson...when you see a word or words highlighted in bold or a different color in a post it usually indicates a link.  Just click on the word(s) and you will be led to more information.  I have had some questions recently about this so just thought I'd share to make sure no one was missing out.