Kentucky Derby Dream Parties

Make your picks for the Kentucky Derby, “the fastest two minutes in sports”, on Saturday, May 7, 2011. Host a “millionaire’s row” seat in front of your T.V. for “the run for the roses” and invite your favorite race fans! This race is packed with rich history and tradition; it is fun and easy to throw a Kentucky Derby party that puts you furlongs ahead with your guests. Here are some tips to bring Churchill Downs to your space:

Invitations
Send guests these Kentucky Derby invitations which are exquisitely imprinted with the officially licensed Kentucky Derby party logo. Encourage guests to come in Derby attire and don’t forget the elaborate, over-sized hat.

Decorations
For a more elaborate party, have your guests walk through a custom creation roses arch. For a party on the simpler side, have a custom creation roses column or two at the entrance. Raise the stakes and create a betting station for guests to place real or mock bets. Decorate your party space with bouquets of Kentucky Derby latex balloon with a brown horse mylar balloon in the center. Fill in your decorations with Kentucky Derby streamers.

Tableware
Set your tables with red gossamer and the elegant Kentucky Derby tableware. The rose topiary centerpiece is the perfect centerpiece for this party.

Menu
The traditional beverage is the mint julep, which is an iced drink made with bourbon, mint, and a sugar syrup. Treat your guests like wealthy horse owners and serve this drink in an ice-frosted silver cup or keep it simple and serve mint juleps in Kentucky Derby frosted cups.

A popular entrée served at the Derby is called burgoo. Burgoo is a thick stew made with beef, chicken, pork, and vegetables, and it is served with a side of mashed potatoes.

Party Favors
Treat your guests to personalized rose milk chocolate lollipops and add the Derby date on the label adorned with red roses. Give the guest that wins a bouquet of chocolate lollipops.

Royal Celebrations for Kate & Prince William

The wedding of Prince William to Kate Middleton on April 29, 2011 at 11:00 AM (be sure to check local listings for television airing time) is anticipated to draw a gigantic global television and internet audience. Princess Diana’s wedding to Prince Charles drew about 750 million television viewers. With so many royalty enthusiasts, royal celebration parties will take place all over the world for friends and family to gather together and watch the couple join in holy matrimony. Get a jump start on your royal celebration!

Invitations
Make your guest list and send out elegant, personalized white party scroll vertical invitations to watch the royal wedding.

Royal Party Decorations
Decorate the party space with wedding stacked mylar balloons. These balloon have the look of presents stacked upon each other in beautiful silver, purple and white. Add pearl white damask patterned latex balloons to make a royal balloon bouquet. Accent the party space with a few pink rose hanging topiary decorations. These topiaries feature luscious pink roses and includes pink ribbon for hanging. Another great decorating tip is to use gossamer streamers for decorating chairs, tables, tie fabulous bows, or create whimsical canopies. The possibilities are endless!

Tableware
No royal celebration would be complete without hors d’oeuvres and cake. Serve your special party food on the something blue wedding kit-n-kaboodle to make your table decorating a breeze. The basic kit includes: dinner plates, luncheon napkins, cups, thank you notes, white plastic cutlery, pink pearl and green pearl balloons, a candy pink plastic table cover, and silver curling ribbon. For a matching touch of floral elegance, add a pink rose bouquet centerpiece to dress up your table(s). To commemorate the carriage that the couple is expected to ride in after the ceremony, bake a carriage cake using the princess carriage cake pan.

Royal Party Favors
Have a champagne toast for Prince William and Kate with the frosted tulip flute personalized glassware imprinted with the couple’s name and date of the wedding that your guests can take home with them to remember the occasion. A guaranteed crowd pleasing favor is one of the many wedding chocolate lollipops to choose from.

Materials, Accessories for Terrific Tabletops & More

Once you’ve gotten your tables beautifully and cleverly covered, it’s time for centerpieces, tableware and finishing touches.

Candles

Use tapers, balls, and votives in a unifying color from your scheme. As long as they are out of the reach of small children, fill all the tables with various sized candles and keep them lit throughout the evening. Prior to the party, put your candles in the refrigerator or freezer, as cooler candles will burn longer.

To float candles, you might color the water with liquid food coloring. Mix colorings to obtain just the right hue. Another idea for floaters is to place a glass bowl, or several different sized wineglasses filled with water (colored or not) on a mirror. Add candles and colored or clear gemstones and enjoy the dreamy look you have created.

Confetti

A sprinkling of confetti here and there should be as a delightful little surprise, and ShindigZ has about 60 designs to fit many themes and color schemes. Not just for table tops, confetti can be used on floorings, in invitations, along pathways, or even inside balloons! This provides a unique touch at a great price.

Curling Ribbon

This is a must-have if you are working with balloons, but you can also use it to tie around a favor at each place setting, to bundle table utensils, or to put the finishing touch on wrapped gifts. Curling ribbon comes in a multitude of colors. Cut 8-12″ lengths of curling ribbon, and curl each piece with the blade of a pair of scissors. Scatter little “curls” over tabletops for an easy, whimsical, and very inexpensive decorative touch!

Garland

Garland can be draped and swagged like streamers can, and is absolutely ideal to mold around centerpieces, outline the edges of tabletops, and wrap around candle bases and votives. Use it to garnish gift packages and accent balloon bouquets. Entwine a garland with twinkle lights and wind it around a column or weave it through a gate. Look for silk floral, metallic, fringe, ivy and more today.

Streamers

While pretty much everyone is familiar with the traditional crepe streamers, they also come in gossamer, foil, netting, holographic and the exotic cracked ice! Streamers can be used to accent tabletops for a truly unique look. Measure the length and/or width of your tables. Add 12″ to each measurement, so that a 6″ length can hang on either side of the table. Place streamers on the table running lengthwise or across the width of the table, or in two directions in a lattice pattern. Streamers can be twisted after they are anchored to a table-end for more dimensionality. Two different colored streamers can be placed back-to-back, and twisted for a two-toned effect.

Decorate a Canopy for an Outdoor Event

Many canopies for indoor use are elegant by design. Those meant for the great outdoors are bound to be more utilitarian and therefore, depending upon the event, in need of some combination of camouflage and softening as well as festive decoration.

There is also real potential for safety issues when it comes to wind, and trip hazards posed by lines and cords.

Nothing beats the sight of a crisp white or green tent canopy set against a blue or twilit sky, but Rule Number One is that the pretty tent will fly if given half a chance — even more so if you have one or more sidewalls attached! If tent instructions say guy lines and/or staking are necessary, believe them! Try also to select a site that is sheltered from the prevailing wind by, say, a copse of trees or a building. If for some reason you can’t stake, keep in mind that the average 10X10 canopy is going to require up to a couple hundred pounds of weight to keep it from drifting away in any significant wind. You can buy or make weights, and you can use bungee cords to tie legs to heavy tables, coolers and the like. (As you can imagine, this is where the need for camouflage begins to come in!)

When you have the wind-proofing figured out, the next thing to look at is electricity. Run extension cords from the power supply along routes where you’re sure folks won’t be walking, or cover them with planking or mats. Snake the cord(s) up a tent leg and attach with twist ties.

From here, it’s all about the decorating!

For lighting, string twinkle lights like scattered stars across the tent ceiling, or use them around the inside edge and hang a lantern from the middle.

Soften the look of metal poles by wrapping them in fabric such as tulle, chiffon, or gossamer streamers. For garden themes, wind floral or ivy garland over the fabric. You might also add twinkle lights here, too.

Use tree decorations or scene setter pieces to help hide canopy weights, keep guests away from guy lines and stakes, and guide the flow of traffic.

Hang party curtains in place of tent sidewalls.

Browse ShindigZ Decorations pages for more ideas on turning your utilitarian canopy into an attractive space for your outdoor events.

Shower the Mod Mom in Hip Style

The pinks and greens in the cute, trendy Mod Mom design can stand alone or lend fresh accents to other baby shower themes. Choose from a great selection of baby shower tableware, decorations, and adorable favor bags in this design.

Once you’ve selected the theme, generate a slogan for use in invitations, customized banners and personalized favors. It can be as simple as, “Come Welcome Baby Smith” or incorporate shower imagery, e.g., “Making a Splash Baby Bash!”

If you can hand-deliver invitations, use curling ribbon to attach them to small party favors such as plush animals in Mod Mom colors or personalized bottles of bubbles.

Create a backdrop for your party that will make all your decorations stand out. Use gossamer decorating material in swags, drapes, backdrops and more. Pink, pastel lavender and/or turquoise would work well with the Mod Mom. Twist two colors together to create a swag that really stands out, and create table runners or chair bows with gossamer streamers.

Mark the guest of honor’s seat with with Mod Mom cutouts hung overhead and a Mom-to-Be Sash draped across her chair.

Then, fill up your party space with balloons. They never go out of style! Create balloon bouquets of pearlescent balloons in two colors, matching your gossamer. Odd-numbered clusters (3, 5, 7, etc.) look best. Attach them with curling ribbon to the backs of chairs or to balloon weights – perhaps beanie toys as balloon weights here? If you don’t favor or have access to a helium tank, scatter bouquets around the room or hang them from the ceiling using various lengths of curling ribbon.

Accent tables with party favors that double as decorations, such as cupcake birthday candles or personalized clear petite glass candle holders.

Finally, get the party started with a Baby Shower Game Kit or Diaper Game Kit. Each kit contains enough materials for up to 12 party players.

Check out the ShindigZ Baby Shower Supplies catalog for more ideas for showering the Mod Mom in your life.

Create an Inviting Underwater Hangout for SpongeBob™ & Friends

The fun of a SpongeBob SquarePants™ party theme begins with the invitations! Start with one of the following slogans, or another that suits your child:

“Bikini Bottom Birthday Bash!”
“Ben’s Barnacle Rockin’ Birthday Party!”
“Oh, Tartar Sauce…It’s Jenna’s Birthday!”

Use the slogan in a SpongeBob Invite/Thank You Combo or create your own invitations. If you can hand-deliver the invitations, try these ideas:

Attach a Tissue Pineapple to each invitation with curling ribbon. Upon delivery, say, “Who lives in a pineapple under the Sea? SpongeBob SquarePants! He wants you to come, and party with me! SpongeBob SquarePants!”

Deliver a message in a bottle from Bikini Bottom™! Add about 4 tablespoons of sand to an empty water bottle, label removed. Cut apart a Shell Necklace and add a few shells to the bottle. Roll the invitation up, and tie it with a small piece of green curling ribbon (as seaweed) or raffia. Push about 2/3 of the rolled-up invitation into the neck of the bottle. The Shell Necklace will provide enough shells for about 10-12 message-in-a-bottle invitations.

As a p.s. on the invitations, encourage guests to wear Hawaiian shirts to the party and, if the season allows, to be ready for some wet fun, too!

Next, break out the bright SpongeBob Classics™ Kit-N-Kaboodle. The basic kit gives you a table cover, balloons, curling ribbon and enough tableware to serve a party of 8; while the deluxe version gives you all of the above plus streamers, birthday candles, a mylar balloon and an Attach N’ Go banner that you can personalize with your own wording.

The banners and balloons are an easy and affordable way to splash the party venue with festive color. Try putting two streamer colors (yellow and orange, if using the SpongeBob Deluxe Kit-N-Kaboodle) back-to-back. Drape and twist the two-toned streamers from the middle of the ceiling outward towards each wall and corner and attach. Then, create a “chandelier” of 5 or 7 balloons to suspend in the middle of the ceiling. More streamers can be used to swag across an entryway or suspended vertically from it as a festive “curtain.” Additional balloons can be used, singly or in clusters, in corners and centerpieces, on chair backs, outside as a signal to arriving guests, and for use in party games.

Give the party room an undersea feel by covering a wall with Dark Blue Water Patterned Gossamer. Populate your “water” with Paper Tropical Fish along with clear and blue balloon “bubbles” suspended at different heights. This idea can also be adapted for a shade tent or canopy outdoors, using gossamer or streamers suspended from the cover and Tissue Fish for a more 3D look.

Decorate an ordinary sheet cake with the SpongeBob™ Cake Topper and decorator’s icing, and the party venue is ready to welcome SpongeBob’s™ friends!

Next post: Activities and favors for a SpongeBob™ theme.