Raise your hand if you saw New Moon last weekend.
**ME ME ME**
We enjoyed it, and spending time with a big group of gals (and even one guy) was a lot of fun! Why don't we do that more?
Anyhoo... here's a recap of the New Moon Premier Party and the different projects to prepare for it. (This is going to be long, but I tried to consolidate photos.) For those of you who are all, "Geez, Kim. Give the Twilight thing a rest," I'll be moving on after this post.
Until June when the next movie comes out.
It's the truth.
As an aside, while it's very Twilight-centered decor which is perfect for a themed-party or movie showing, I think that much of the decorating could be adjusted and used for a vampire-themed Halloween party quite easily. I'm definitely planning to use some of the items for future Halloweens. And, the red, black and white items are really staple items that can be used often.
So, there. I'm not TOTALLY crazy. =)
Decor
I have a tendency to go a little overboard with party decor. (My husband's eyes are rolling back in his head right now.) It took about two weeks to put everything together, between taking down fall decorations, cleaning and putting up new decor. That's not including the time it took to come up with ideas. (Thanks to my friend Rebecca for all her help brainstorming and planning.)
But, the decor turned out so fun and really set the tone, so I think the work was worth it. Every person who walked in just went crazy over all the details. That made me smile.
I knew from the start that I would use lots of candles. I had a ton of red and white candles from our wedding. So that was one reason. Plus, they really give you a big bang for your buck. I put them everywhere. And, I even used red wax to make some of the white candles "bleed." (Click on any photos to make them larger.)
Do you see the tree stumps above (and below)? Those were a little vision I had. Someone Ryan works with gave them to us to use. I just cleaned them off, spray painted them and sealed them. Lovely decor and perfect to add height to tables. I'm definitely going to be using these for Christmas, too.
Thanks to
Hostess with the Mostess , all of our frames in the house got a makeover. I swapped out almost every frame. It seems crazy, but it was so fun to see all the quotes. All of the guests were reading them.
In addition to frames, I used the matted frames shown above. I made these for the wedding and hung onto them. They are just high-quality photo mats (which are CHEAP on Ebay). I glued two back to back with scrapbook paper in the middle and ribbons and jewels on the side. They were quite simple to make. They worked perfectly for this. And, they also make a great menu card.
I had big plans for the outside, but they didn't quite come to fruition. However, I ordered this free vinyl banner from
Vista Print with the same saying from our
invites . I spray painted the pumpkins in our yard black and added red glitter. I found these arrows at Dollar Tree. The front say North Pole. I just flipped them around and wrote names of places in the book in black permanent marker. Add a few mason jar luminaries and a tree stump and you are set to go.
I changed out some of the decor in the hutches to match the red, black and white theme.
And, I made Martha pom poms for the windows. Emily helped me make 20 or 25 of these. These are so simple to make, relatively quick and quite inexpensive. If you haven't made them, you should. Here are the
instructions.
You can also see our new pillows in the photo above. I happened to find them in time for the party. I think they brighten up the sofa.
I even tried to make the bathroom look a little festive.
And, since I wasn't in a single photo, I decided to take a photo of myself when I was capturing the beauty of the bathroom (don't say that very often). All the cool bloggers do it. I'm nothing if not a follower. Plus, I wanted you to see the I (heart) Twilight sticker. Crackin' me up.
Plus, it was so nice of Edward to show up. Rebecca ordered him from Amazon. He was the hit of the party. Everyone wanted her picture taken with him.
So, this was pretty much what we did to set the mood.
Food
We asked folks to bring a Twilight-inspired dish, and people went all out with the theme. (I maintain that people like direction.)
I made vegetarian vampire veggies and dip and Edward's (deviled) eggs. I died the yolk mixture red with icing coloring. They turned out pretty cool.
Other creative food items:
- a chocolate fountain with white chocolate turned red.
- rice crispy treats, cut in the shape of apples with a fork stuck in each one.
- stake-through-the-heart chicken skewers, and each skewer had a laminated Twilight ornament to take home.
- Twilight truffles.
- themed sugar cookies.
- Bella's birthday cake.
- Werewolf (puppy) chow
I set out a marker and place tags for people to write the name of the dish on. I think folks liked this. Got the creative juices flowin'.
Drinks
To go with the theme, I provided red wine (labeled with the blood types courtesy of
Hostess with the Mostess) and red punch to drink. I also wrapped water bottles for guests to drink at the party or take to the movie theatre.
Sharon brought a white whine labeled "Plasma." (Clever)
And, Rebecca created my favorite Twilight-inspired drinks. Ever.
Blood shots. She actually went so far as to make laminated labels for the test tubes with a scanner. They seriously looked real. I was dying over them. The drink was a simple blend of vodka and Hawaiian Punch. Yummy and theme-friendly.
(P.S. She ordered the test tubes online. Thank goodness for the Internet.)
Favors and gifts
I wanted to send everyone home with a little something. So, I put together little packets of red licorice bites to take to the movie and a bookmark.
The bookmarks said "Yes. I read books about teenage vampires." The labels on the licorice is from
Flickr. Both were printed on sticker paper, which made the process of making them pretty simple.
For gifts for the games (see below), I ordered four of the notebooks above from
Vista Print . (They were only $4.99 apiece.) I also picked up four packs of Twilight Sweethearts Conversation Hearts.
Games
I know there is a school of thought that games at adult parties are silly or childish. Well, I'm currently covering my ears and singing "lalalala" because I don't believe it.
We came up with a few ideas for games. One was an icebreaker game after folks got there. There were some people who didn't know each other. So, Rebecca created a sheet with a "bingo" type networking activity. You could sign different squares if the description applied to you. All descriptions were related to the book. For example - been to Idaho, been caught in a love triangle, petted a wolf.... This was pretty fun and allowed people to get to know each other if they didn't.
The second game was a trivia game. I pulled the questions from various Internet sources.
Here are links to both printable games that we created, if you are interested.
Twilight icebreaker
Twilight/New Moon trivia
So... can you tell we had a great time at the party?
Then, it was off to the theatre to fight the masses to see the movie. We ended up scoring an entire row for our group, which was super fun.
At the end of the night, we were all exhausted but had a great time.
Now... we are all looking forward to Eclipse. I don't know how we'll top it, but we'll sure try. =)
So, how crazy do you think we are, on a scale of 1 to 10?
I'd say 9.5. That's probably conservative.
But, I'd really love to hear what you like about the party and ideas you have to make the next one better.
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