Super Bowl Football Party

Super-cute for the Super Bowl!

Penalty on me for having no football invitations on FunProperlyDone.com yet. But these are fun enough to be great motivation for next season's birthdays, team parties, or bowl bash.

Ideas courtesy of People Magazine. Links included for buying on your own.

Referee Cupcakes. Get the zebra-stripe liners at ShopSweetsandTreats.com. By the way, while there I found some darling FREE flags for your drinking straws. Click the link to get.

Football piñata at Zurchers.com or BestPriceToys.com.

Circus Party

Create your own Greatest Show on Earth, inspired by Family Fun Magazine. Create an easy Photo Booth using a brightly striped tablecloth as a backdrop, then add in easy props like a clown sponge nose, mini umbrella (for a tight rope walker), fake mustache, strong-man padded muscle shirt, etc.

Cute game idea: Make your own "tight rope walk" by slightly elevating a 2 x 4 board on bricks.

Popcorn box cake: Stripe a sheet cake with red and white frosting, add actual popcorn or caramel corn to "fill" the box. This photo thanks to coolest-birthday-cakes.com.

Best in Show cakes

Darling birthday cake ideas from the queen herself, Martha Stewart. See a Poodle, Owl, Bear, and Fish.

Winter on the way? Cool party ideas

Punxatawney Phil says six more weeks of winter. What better way to make the most of it than a party?

Activities

- Creative snowman construction: pass out props, colored water in spray bottles (mix in food coloring), use old Halloween costume pieces, try self portraits, and more. Give cool prizes for the most unique Frosty friends.

- Snow sculpting. Don't limit the party to snow people. Try animals, vehicles, buildings, letters...go wild.

- Make homemade snow globes. Instructions here: http://bit.ly/ntlosS

Games

- Snowman wrap-up. Divide into teams of two and wrap your partner in toilet paper. Once sufficiently "snowed in," add scarf, hat, and construction paper buttons. Fastest team to "freeze" their teammate wins! http://bit.ly/yHDlCN

- Find a list of fun-in-the-flakes games here: http://bit.ly/9hQJQy

Food

- Snowman on a stick. Slide three 1" banana slices onto a wooden skewer to make the snowman body. Add half an apple wedge on top as the triangular hat, then poke pretzel sticks into the center banana slice as arms. Mini chocolate chips become eyes and buttons.

- Top a drink with whip cream then add chocolate chip eyes and mouth, plus a candy corn for a nose. Works as a topper to hot cocoa or even a health smoothie.
- Penguin cookies: dip Pepperidge farm Milano cookies in melted chocolate -- about 1/4" on each side to create wings and 1/2" on the top for the head. (The belly remains the light cookie color.) Add candy or frosting for the eyes and a yellow beak from frosting or a snipped triangle of fruit roll-up. Some extra fun: sugar cubes make fun ice blocks and jordan almonds are perfect penguin eggs. (Ideas thanks to Family Fun magazine.)

Kitchen Bridal Shower

Chances are, soon-to-be newlyweds need just about everything but the kitchen sink. Get their lives started right with a kitchen or house-warming shower.

INVITATION:

A microwave party invitation opens up to reveal the details about the shower. There's room for the time, date, place, etc. -- plus where the bride and groom are registered.

GUESTS:

Showers can be intimate gatherings with just the bride and her entourage. They can also be a great way to celebrate with friends and acquaintances who might not be close enough to attend the wedding itself. Include them in the festivities; a low-key open house is a great way for lots of people to stop in and share good wishes.

Our shower was an open house that included neighbors and church friends. About 35 were invited which kept a nice flow of 8-10 people coming through to visit with the bride throughout the night.

ACTIVITIES:

Bridal shower games can be fun with a smaller group. Should you have an open house (or people who'd just rather visit with each other), get everyone involved by sharing some advice or a favorite thought or memory about the bride. We had people write something they loved about the bride (so her groom would remember how lucky he is!) on pre-designed pages that match the invitation. At night's end, the pages were collected and bound into a book along with pictures of the evening. The bride received the book as part of her wedding gift.

FOOD:

Good girly stuff (can you say, chocolate?). A selection of homemade and store-bought treats can go a long way without too much effort. Our menu:

Homemade chocolate cake, cashew cookies, slush punch (easy but fancy)

Purchased cream puffs, pastries, sugar cookies shaped and decorated as bridal dresses

Fresh fruit

DECOR:

Pick something the bride loves:

Seasonal -- our shower was close to Valentine's Day, so we leveraged the holiday theme of hearts and love. It was easy to transition pink, red and white decorations into shower decor without feeling like a Valentine's party. Think blushing bride and use any of your seasonal decorations to give your shower a relevant feel.

Interests -- What does the bride love to do? At a previous shower, our bride was well envied for her closet's fabulous contents. We raided her shoe selection and decorated with them. Shoe boxes were wrapped in black paper and her colorful heels displayed on top of them. Inexpensive mini "glass slippers" came from a party supply store and served as decorations as well as favors.

Gift Specific -- Try keeping with the party theme of kitchen/home and decorate using gifts the bride may have already received (place a new toaster on a pedestal, arrange flowers in a blender, make a display of her dishes).

THANK YOUS:

As part of the bride's book with wishes from the guests, a few pages served as a record of gifts received. Not only could the bride look back at her friends' generosity, she can use the list to write thank you notes. Matching thank you notes were given to the bride as part of her shower gift from the hostesses.

Safari Party: Lion Invitation

I've got two little wild things at my house -- this party theme was perfect for both of them.

Invitations

The king of the jungle roars out the party details when you open his mouth wide.

Party Favors

I went a little wild myself on this one. Each child got a plastic safari hat (available at party supply stores like Zurcher's for about $1), a t-shirt stenciled with the same lion as on the invite (found cheap t-shirts at an overstock store and at that point in my mothering life had boundless energy to do stuff like stenciling...), and a pair of "binoculars" fashioned out of empty toilet paper tubes (or when you run out of them, paper towel tubes cut in half). The binoculars came in handy during the Lion Hunt game.

Food

This party was for 4- and 5-year olds, so safari gourmet it was not. But the titles on the menu raised little eyebrows. "Giant Fried Butterfly Wings" were potato chips. "Boiled Snakes" were hot dogs. And apple and banana slices became "Orangutan Hors D'oeuvres."

For the birthday cake, we made a basic 8" round cake, frosted it orange, and cut out tiger stripes from fruit leather. Nilla wafers were the big cat's muzzle. Pretty easy for a homemade cake, and the kids loved it.