Hollywood Slumber Party

 

 

Some notes on a few things for you...

The Hollywood sign was made from foam poster board. I basically just used a ruler and box cutter. Each segment of the letters were six inches wide and as tall as I could make them on the board. I screwed them into garden stakes and hammered them into the lawn. It was quite windy but they survived. Some of them came apart from their screws and had to be taped last minute so perhaps tacky glue and screws is the way to go.

The party room entrance and ceiling decorations are made from vinyl tablecloths that I cut in half length wise. I saw that idea on Pinterest, but could never really find specific directions for it.

The star molds on the cupcakes were done with Wilton candy discs made the same way I did my seashell candy cupcakes. However this time, I added the luster dust with a brush to the star mold tray, before adding the melted candy. This saved me from having to hand paint each star.

I made the VIP badges on Word and had them laminated at Staples.

The "Swag Bags" had a few girlie things I picked up from the dollar section at Target and Michaels. Some items were a nail file, make up bag I found in the party colors, sleep mask, and hair accessories.

I would definitely suggest having a schedule with plenty of activities planned. There are many great sites out there to get ideas from. And always have a back-up plan! Some of our favorite things we did were...

• The red carpet photos
• Jenga during appetizers
• A question box Chloe and I made. We all sat in a circle and each girl read and answered the question. Some were easy, others really made them think. They ranged from, If you had a super power, what would it be? How many kids do you want? If you found out your friend stole something, how would you react?
• Pajama Fashion Show- This was the girls favorite activity. They had soooo much fun and really let loose. I gave them props like boas, hats, glasses, and we played a song for each girl to strut her stuff. The spectating girls went crazy for each girl on the catwalk, taking pictures of them with their phones and screaming for them!
• Movies-I had three choices of movies and they watched two. One before bed and one in the morning after breakfast. I had on hand, Freaky Friday, Monte Carlo, and Cinderella Story with Hillary Duff.
• Breakfast was kept super simple with yogurt, granola, mini chocolate chips, fruit, muffins, donut holes, and apple juice.

For helpful links and templates I used in my planning , click here.

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Ribbon Storage

I have been looking for an organized way to store my ribbon for years. I have looked for storage box solutions, even trying once to make my own out of a cardboard box and a dowel. Recently I came up with this solution. While it didn't solve all my ribbon dilemmas, it's certainly a start in the right direction.

This is my armoir. All of my craft and office supplies are stored here. And now, so is my ribbon collection. Part of it anyway.

I still have more ribbon to store. Some of the holes in the cardboard ribbon holder are too small to fit over the smallest tension rod. This is still leaves me with the annoyance of eventually having to remove spools of ribbon from the rod in order to discard empty ones. Oh well, I can't have it all I guess!

Do you have a great way to store

ribbon you can share with me?

Asian Inspired No Recipe Salad

Got five minutes? That's all this bit of deliciousness will take you to whip up. I love salad, I think it may be my favorite food. As in, if I were stuck on a deserted island, it may just be my food of choice. It's so versatile. My current salad kick was born out of a desire to make a salad that I didn't feel needed tomatoes. The tomatoes here are horrid right now. At the beginning of each week I chop, then wash a bunch of romaine hearts. I spin them dry and store them in a ziploc. Then, at lunch during the week it only takes a few minutes to throw a salad together. I have actually declined lunch invitations to eat salad at home. Not to toot my own horn or anything, well okay, just this once...I have been told I make the best salads by quite a few people.

Here it is.

Five Minute Asian Inspired  No Recipe Salad

Stuff you will need:

• A bowl. The size will depend on how much salad you want to eat.
• Chopped Romaine. The first important part to a good salad is healthy lettuce cut into bite sized pieces. BITE SIZED. Think about that.
• Some chopped, not peeled, English cucumbers.
• One or two chopped scallions. White and green parts.
• Some shredded carrot.
• Some toasted, sliced almonds and sesame seeds. Just toast them in a pan on your stove. Takes 3 minutes!

                                                   Raw                      Toasted 
You need to have smellervision because these toasted nuts smell AMAZING! Finally put all your ingredients into the bowl and toss the salad with your favorite Asian dressing. I used Kraft Light Asian Toasted Sesame. It is not the healthiest, but it is really good. Besides, I don't have a good homemade Asian dressing recipe and I'm too lazy to make my own for lunch.

Popovers

Pop on over to your neighbor's house with these Popovers or Yorkshire Pudding known by some. Doing something nice for someone without any particular reason will not only make them feel special, it will make you feel good too. While I used a Popover Pan to make these, you could also make them in a large 6 cup muffin tin. I adapted this recipe slightly from Williams-Sonoma. I only changed the way I baked them. So I will give you the original recipe and my changes.

Popovers
From: Williams-Sonoma
Makes 12 Popovers

Ingredients:
4 Tbs. unsalted butter, melted
6 eggs, lightly beaten
2 cups milk
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. salt
Butter and Jam for serving (optional) Harry and David Blackberry Preserves

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Spray cups of a 6-cup popover pan with nonstick cooking spray. Pour 1/2 tsp. of the melted butter into each cup. In a bowl, whisk together eggs and milk, then whisk in the remaining 2 TBS. of butter. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour and salt, then whisk into egg mixture. Whisk vigorously until smooth, about 2 minutes. Divide batter among prepared cups and bake for 20 minutes. Reduce heat to 325 degrees and bake for 15 minutes more. Remove from oven and invert the pan onto a wire rack. Let the pan cool, then spray with nonstick cooking spray, pour 1/2 teaspoon of the melted butter into each cup and bake the remaining batter. Serve immediately with butter and jam.

My notes:
First, I always half the recipe and only make 6 popovers. I allow the melted butter to cool slightly so that it doesn't curdle the eggs. I DO NOT pre-heat the oven. I put my pan filled with the batter into a cold oven. Then, I turn it on to 450 degrees and allow them to bake for about 15-20 minutes, watch them. Finally, reduce the heat to 325 and bake them for another 10-15 minutes,  until they are the desired color. I have served these at dinner with butter and for breakfast with jam.

Hollywood Slumber Party **Part 1** Planning and Resources

Hey everyone, thanks for your comments and suggestions for the party. With a little over two weeks to continue planning Chloe and I have become super excited. We have been working together on all the details. We were able to get the invitations out last Friday, have picked a color scheme, started making decorations, planned the food, and shopped for dresses. Here is a rundown of what we have done so far. I'm including links for some fabulously free resources we have used.

Invitations:
We made VIP tickets at http://www.printwithmypic.com/ with Chloe's picture on them. I also included a letter to the parents detailing the event. You can leave me a comment if you would like a copy of the letter to use. Unfortunately, the photos I took of the ticket and invitation have been accidentally deleted. Chloe helped word the ticket, and picked the picture we would use. She happened to be wearing her Dad's aviator glasses so she looked pretty famous to me. She wrote each girls name in a very artistic way on a regular envelope and we attached a big glittery sticker of the initial of the recipients name to seal the envelope. They were so cute, I'm so bummed I lost the pics! Go here to make your free tickets, then print them on cardstock. We used the filmstrip ticket template.

Magazine Covers:
We also designed some magazine covers also at http://www.printwithmypic.com/. We will probably frame some and use them as decorations. With one, we will glue it to an actual celebrity magazine. Inside the magazine we will replace some of the faces with Chloe's face. When you go to make your magazine you will see there are only three templates. You can change everything about them from the layout, colors, and wording. We made one called Celebrity Magazine and one called Person magazine instead of People Magazine. On the covers we wrote things like "Chloe celebrates her 10th birthday in style",  "Chloe-Spotted in L.A.", Chloe and Seacrest (her celeb crush)- Couple of the Year!", and "Chloe-Actress of the Year." That last one is actually kind of true, at least in our house!

Colors:
Gold, Black, and Silver

Photo Shoot:

On Saturday Chloe and I went shopping to Marshalls and found the perfect dresses. She got a white and silver one with silver 1/2 inch heeled shoes for walking the red carpet. We also scored a gold sequins dress on clearance for $5 that we decided to get to do a mini photoshoot of her. We figured a girl could borrow it too if she didn't wear a dress to the event. She wore the gold dress and we did her hair and applied a bit of make-up for the photoshoot. These photos are being used for the movie poster and posterboards. This is an example of how we might use one of the photos. We used Picnik to edit, but Picnik is closing soon, so you may have to use other photo editing software.

For the purposes of blog posting I have fudged the movie name a bit. I don't want to violate any trademark laws! For the party it will have the actual movie title. And of course I blurred out her face for blog posting as well. I don't need her picture showing up all over Pinterest, now do I?

Now that we have cleared that up, we are also enlarging the three of the photos on posterboards at Costco. They do this and have them ready for pickup at most Costco's the next day. The cost for a 16x20 posterboard was $14.99. It comes with a white border. I figured this was cheaper than framing enlargements. We will hang all three posterboards over the food table.

Movie Posters:
At http://www.bighugelabs.com/ you can easily design your own free movie poster. We designed our free poster and saved it to the computer. I had it printed as a regular 16x20 enlargement at Costco for $5.99.

Phone Apps:
I have found quite a few free photo apps on the iphone and Droid where you can insert a photo with a famous movie star, or on a billboard, etc.

Hollywood Star Generator:
Here, you can add any name to a Hollywood Star. You can then save the photo and use it however you wish.

Decorations:
Party City did have some decorations, including two sizes of red carpet. I found that Amazon had a different selection than what I found in stores. But most didn't qualify for Amazon Prime. I plan on plastic table cloths to decorate the ceiling like I saw here.

Food:
We are still debating the food, as I'm not sure if I will have any assistants on the day of the party. So I will either order pizza, or do mini corn dogs and slider. I will also do veggie sticks in cute individual cups with ranch. Presentation is everything here and I really want the girls to feel they can play the part. I will buy plastic flutes for sparkling cider and spa water.

Cupcakes:
I found a beautiful gold and crystal teardrop Opulent Treasures cupcake stand at Marshall's. I will do red velvet cupcakes with white frosting, gold sprinkles and a gold candy star with each girls name written on it in black edible ink. I will use white candy for the molds and paint them gold as I did with my seashell cupcakes. You can find the candy mold at Amazon. It has to be the flat star mold if you plan on writing on them.

Pinterest:
My Hollywood Slumber Party Board with all of these resources.

I can't wait to share all the pictures with you!

I hope it's a day Chloe never forgets!