I'm baaaaaaack! And here to share a little Valentine Cocktail Party I threw for my parents (via iphone photos...sorry about that). For Christmas this year, I gave them a "Party in a Box". It was a little box filled with idea cards for different parties. Each idea card had a description of the decorations, food, and signature drinks the party would include. The idea was to have my parents pick one of the parties that they would like to throw, and John and I would do the rest. The gift included custom invitations, house cleaning before and after the party, decorations, food, a signature drink, party favors, and a photo booth.
My parents (obviously) chose to have a Valentine Cocktail Party. Here's a run-down of the little party details:
Signature Drink-Love Potion: I didn't take a picture of one of these drinks made up, but they were cute. I bought peach and raspberry champagne, and peach and raspberry sherbet. I used a melon baller to put tiny scoops of sherbet in the bottom of a champagne glass, and then topped the glass off with the corresponding flavor of champagne. Oh, and I garnished them with pink rock candy because rock candy never gets old, right?
Love Basket Drawing: I thought it would be fun to do a little drawing, so we passed out tickets as people came in the door. One lucky couple went home with a "Love Basket" filled with champagne, chocolate, movie tickets, red velvet pankcake mix, altoids, and a candle.
Cupcakes with Gummy Lips Toppers: I'm of the opinion that you shouldn't stress yourself out by hand-making a bunch of pretty treats for parties. Baking is one of those things that can't be done too far ahead of time, and you already have so much to do the day of a party, so if you can buy something that tastes as good as homemade (in my case, it would taste better anyway), then simplify your life and purchase some pretty treats. I added my own decorative twist to these cupcakes I got from a local grocery store by adding gummy lip candies to the top using toothpicks. It doesn't take a lot to make something look more unique and less "store-bought"
Lightbulb Party Favors: Ok, I saw these little glass jars that look like lightbulbs at Hobby Lobby, and I knew I wanted to use them for something. Just a tip...signage can tie anything together. I just made up a sign that said, "You've brightened our night! Please take a party favor." I filled the jars with pink and red sixlets. (You can order sixlets in about any color you could imagine. Several online candy stores sell them. Thank you, Google!)
Sparkly Heart Pastries: As I said earlier, I don't like spending a lot of time baking the day of a party. I'm more concerned with the big picture...how everything is set up...I guess the presentation is more important to me (hence the name of this blog). With that being said, these cute heart pastries were SO easy. Like, embarrassingly easy. This is about the only type of baking project I would be willing to do the DAY OF a party. Here's how you make them: Buy pre-made pie crust dough, some premade pie filling, and chocolate chips or butterscotch chips. I just cut the pie dough with heart-shaped cookie cutters. Put a dollop of your favorite pie filling (I used lemon) or a handful of chocolate or butterscotch chips in between two hearts, and crimp the edges with a fork. These little mini pies only had to bake for about 6 minutes. When I took them out of the oven, I sprinkled them with some edible glitter for extra flair!
Photo booth...with confetti: John and I have finally added photo booths to our business model. We have a wedding videography business, and have just been doing photobooths for our personal parties for fun. After getting several requests for photo booths, we thought, why not??? They are so fun!! Since we have decided to make it part of our business, we invested in some new props, and my parents and their friends were the first to try them out! This was an especially fun photo booth because my parents were game for having confetti thrown all over their house. I won't lie...it's messy. They will be finding confetti for YEARS. But in my opinion, it's worth it because the amount of fun had in a photo booth exponentially increases with confetti. Below are just a few pics from the photo booth. My parents got a CD of all the high-resolution images, and we put all the pictures into a stop-motion video set to one song (scroll to the bottom of this post to watch)!
The Findley's 2013 Valentine Party from John Dewberry on Vimeo.
