"Golden Hollywood" Oscar Party

 My friend Heather and I threw our annual Oscar party last night.  The party was fun, and everything went well.  Except for the actual awards show.  I could write a whole post on my thoughts about the show (maybe I will!), but I can sum it up with one word:  boring!  Seriously, these people are supposed to be the best of the best in entertainment...why can't they put together an entertaining awards show?  It was a good season for movies, and there seemed to be a lot of potential for a good show this year, but for the most part, I was very unimpressed...and bored.

Most of our guests ended up leaving before the show was over, due to the fact that it was boring, plus everyone had babysitters who needed to be relieved back home.  But still, we all had a good time.   I will say that this party completely wore me out.  I was EXHAUSTED by the time I got home last night; I am getting too old for these kinds of things!

Daniel wins the husband of the year award, because he spent the afternoon taking care of the girls while I helped get the party ready.  Then he skipped the party and stayed home all night with the girls, because we couldn't find a babysitter.  And while I was out partying, he also cleaned up our whole house!!

Here are more details than you probably ever wanted to know about our party!

FOOD:

Heather and I make a good party planning team.  She likes to do all the food and party games, and I like to do the decor and crafty things.  So all credit for the menu and food preparation goes to her.   Our menu included:

Oreo peanut butter brownie cupcakes and a golden tuxedo cookie cake

 Mini spinach quiche bites and ham and cheddar cornbread bites

 

Golden Hollywood punch and  Homemade Panera mac n cheese

 Tiramisu trifles and a popcorn bar (with various popcorns, seasonings and mix ins).  The popcorn bar idea was inspired by this.

DECOR:

 The decor was inspired by this gold and black New Year's Eve party.    I just love the look of the sparkling gold paired with the black and white stripes.

I throw a lot of parties, and I don't have a lot of money, so I have found that it is necessary to recycle many old party supplies and reuse them over and over again for different parties.  I decorated these votive candle holders for my book club last month, and the sparkling gold wrappers were perfect for this party too.  I just took off the pink paper and the rhinestone, made the Oscar party tag and attached it to the front...voila, it's like a brand new candle!

I also LOVE these white frames from Ikea and use them all the time for parties.  It is so easy to just switch out the papers inside and create a totally new look with the same frames.  The frames are only 99 cents, and next time I am at Ikea, I am going to buy 10 more!

 One more recycled party item:  these office binder clips that serve as name cards for the food.  I cannot even count the number of times I have used these same clips.  They are large binder clips, and then I just tape paper on them and tie ribbon around them.  So easy to switch out and redecorate with a new theme!

Each year we have a packet for each party guest, which includes a ballot, a bingo card, and usually several papers that we use to play games throughout the night.  I saw this idea on Pinterest, and I just had to copy it.  It matched our theme perfectly!!  I bought the bags through this Etsy shop.  I used the template provided here, and traced the Oscar statue onto sparkling gold cardstock.  Then I cut them all out and attached them to the bags.  I did not love this idea while I was cutting out all those statues, but I did love the final product!

For favors, I got these little gold boxes from Oriental Trading (I also go the black/white striped table runners from there).  Inside I put some gold wrapped candy (Werthers and Rolos), then I finished them off with some black satin ribbon and Oscar party tags.  I thought these were super cute.  Too bad we forgot to pass them out to about half of our guests before they left!

I folded the napkins to look like envelopes.  But I think they looked too pretty, because hardly anyone used them!!

OK, that is just about everything!  Heather planned some games for everyone to play to try to keep the show interesting, but once the party actually got started I didn't take many pictures.  Here is one group shot while everyone was consulting their ballots and bingo cards during the show:

Whew, just putting this post together has worn me out.  Good thing I have a few months before the next big party (Isla's 2nd birthday in May!).