12717

Winter Wonderland -30yr- Icy Drink Names

January 2006

LaChrisa in The Colony, TX USA

Runner Up

I just finished throwing myself a 30th birthday party.  The theme was WINTER WONDERLAND.  My birthday is January, so I luckily was able to find all winter related party decorations on sale after Christmas. Also, my tree is trimmed in snowmen, penguins, and other wintry items, so that reduced a lot of my cost too.   Let's start at the beginning,

INVITATIONS: I normally use evite.com, but decided to make old fashion invites for this party.  I found snowflake stationary with matching envelopes.  I typed up a little variation of Walking in a Winter Wonderland song, 'YOUR INVITED ARE YOU LISTENING, IN MY HOUSE THE SNOW IS GLISTENING, IT'S A BEAUTIFUL SITE, WE ARE DRINKING TONIGHT, PARTY IN A WINTER WONDERLAND. GONE AWAY IS MY TWENTIES, HERE TO STAY IS MY THIRTIES, SING ME A BIRTHDAY SONG, WHILE A DANCE ALONG, PARTY IN A WINTER WONDERLAND", which one of the guests asked me to sing at the party.  That was very funny since I really can not sing.  I added all the standard party information along with attire info(white, blues, and silver/grays). I made the words look like a snowman in the middle of each invitation.

DECORATIONS:  I really wanted to transform my dining, kitchen, breakfast nook, and family room into all white and an actually winter wonderland.  Unfortunately, our house décor is all browns and dark furniture, so we had to compromise.  I did cover all tables, eating, buffet island, coffee, and end, with white tablecloths and plastic snowflake printed table covering.  I used white chair covers that I borrowed from a friend that runs a wedding business along with sheer fabrics and white string lights to hang from the walls and around the house.  I simply took long panels of this fabric pinned it from one of the on the wall up the wall as far as I could reach, I have 25 foot ceilings in the dining room.  I also placed the snowflake plastic table covering behind it to make it look like it was snowing.  I could not find too many white tablecloths as cheap as the ones above so I placed white blankets over the top of my brown couch to make it look like snowcapped mountains. I placed white garland in a pile in the middle of my coffee table, inserted blue candy cane striped candles, white grape berry floral stems, and a couple of stuffed penguin and snowmen ornaments for a centerpiece. 

Next I placed my orange throw pillows from my couch in a semi-circle around the fireplace and covered them with additional white chair covers to look like a pile of snow.  On the breakfast table, I used foil snowflake garland and the stuffed snowmen from my tree and made a snowman 'mobile' hanging from the light fixture at various lengths.  I took the foil garland all the way up the chain to the ceiling so it looked like snow failing all the way down.  I placed clear 4in cylinder candleholders with floating snowflake candles in water around, sprinkled fake snow, and blue and white foil snowflake confetti around the center.  On the buffet island, I have 2 hanging candelabras flanking the sink.  I removed my orange candles replaced with satin ball ornaments (snowballs), hung fake icicles, and snowflakes from them.  I then wrapped the black metal with the white garland to appear as snow had fallen on them.  I also purchased plastic goblets, filled with fake snow, and placed a stuffed snowman ornaments in it surrounded it with fake snow and a satin white ball to look like snow balls.  I had purchased plastic serve ware, chips and dip plates and bowls, which have snowmen and snowflakes on them after Christmas 2 years ago.  I also purchased white platters from Walmart, from the $1 section and used all of this on the buffet I sprinkled more of the snowflake confetti and foil icicles in and around these dishes.   I used the same goblets put a blue paper tissue with white snowflake in it to hold the Hershey kisses and white chocolate covered pretzels around the house. 

On the mantle, I covered it with the 60 ft of white garland, placed the same satin white balls, stuffed snowmen ornaments, and penguins ornaments, candlesticks with a snowflake, and a white Santa that I named "Jack Frost".  I hung snowflakes at various lengths and more fake plastic icicles or various sizes. I wanted to lay white trash bags on the kitchen floor to have an "ice pond", but did not have enough time to make it happen.  I placed some of the cut up white garland over the punch bowl pedestal added some of the satin balls and a penguin ornament. I hung white plastic candy cane ornaments around the perimeter of the punch bowl too.   On the drink bar we had a Igloo water container holding shredded ice from Sonic, 3 pitchers of drinks, see food below for details, white liquors, white and blue fruit juices, and covered the counter with the blue and white snowflake plastic table covering.  I also hung snowflakes from various places on the ceiling in the family room and breakfast area and at various lengths and numbers so to appear it was snowing.  I placed plastic snowflake garland like a beaded curtain in the hallway between the dining room and on the breakfast nook window.  I placed several snow blankets against the walls of the hallway to look like shoveled snow under the island where the barstools would go with blue lights underneath to give a blue glow.  The same snow blankets were used up the stairs to look like fresh fallen snow.  

In a niche held a large white Santa, Old Man Winter,with the white garland at his feet and more icicles handing from the top.  In the dining room, which is in the front of the house and the entrance to the party, I placed the party favors in a wooden bowl on a pedestal at the front door to hand out when guest left.  I did put a white trash bag down on the tile at the front door along with snow blankets bordering it, some more white satin ornament balls, and 6 in stuffed penguins from the floral section at Joanns.  I put white chair covers on the folding chairs and used a white tablecloth with the plastic snowflake covering down the center of the table.  I placed blue lights on the underside of the table to make a blue glow coming out from it.  I used silver ornament garland to wrap my black metal light fixture.  I put the 4in glass candleholder cylinders with the floating snowflake candles in a circle on both ends of table and plastic goblets in a circle right in the middle with fake snow and snowmen in them.  I sprinkled piles of the fake snow around them and blue and white foil confetti.  I wrapped the banister and railing, top and bottom with silver foil garland.  I sprayed the very large mirror I have hanging in the entry way with spray snow and hung icicles and 3-D silver snow flakes from it.  I spent about a full week decorating and tweaking the decorations before the party. 

FOOD/DRINK:   I was going to do winter beef stew, cornbread, and a winter salad, but my guest list grew too big for it to be cost efficient and I did not have enough seating for everyone.  I just provided party food, such as meatballs, chips and dips, veggie plates, mini sub sandwiches, and so on.  My mother in law and sister in law made a couple of Vietnamese dishes, pork rice soup and spring rolls, that are white to go with the theme.  I did take a little time on research drinks, cocktails, mock tails, and punch.  I found really cute drink names, Ice Queen, Frostbite, Artic Blast, Artic Freeze, Baby Eskimo and Melted Snow.  I made 2 cocktails, 1 mock tails, and 1 punch.  Ice Queen was just vodka and white cranberry or white grape juice. A mock tail version of champagne is white grape juice and ginger ale.  This concoction was placed in a pitcher with a label.

ICE PRINCESS: MOCK TAIL.  Melted Snow is vodka, half and half, and Coco Lopez cream of coconut, so I put the half and half and cream of coconut in one of the pitchers with a lable Melted Snow: Just add Vodka.  I placed white cranberry juice in another pitcher with a label,

FROSTBITE: Add Alcohol.  The punch I made was called Artic Freeze and turned out so pretty.  It was just blue Hawaiian punch with thick layer of shredded coconut on the top of it.  You can also add ice cream rolled into balls and frozen for Snow Day Punch.  There was plenty of vodka left over for vodka & 7-up, vodka & white cranberry juice, or vodka & white grape juice.  I also purchased a pre-made Blue Margarita.   I had some beer for the light drinkers in a metal planter with a white trash bag around it to catch the condensation.  There were plenty of other sodas and non alcoholic drinks too.  My mother with some direction from me made a snowman cake from 2-6 or 9 in round foil cake pan placed an orange slice for the nose, heresy kisses right side up for the eyes, and upside down(pushed into the cake) for the mouth and buttons.  I also made Heavenly Hash and provided fruit and a creamy fruit dip.

PARTY FAVORS:   I went back and forth on this and decided to take clear ball ornaments fill them with white snow and tie a blue or white ribbon with blue or white snowflakes.  I purchased snowman shaped peppermint melts for potpourri pots, stuck a clear label on it saying thank you, and tied another ribbon with snowmen on it to look like a scarf.  I placed both of these items with a gift card with snowflakes on it, of course, that I had wrote, Thank you for celebrating a new chapter in my life in different variations, in little white drawstring mesh bags, which have snowflakes at the end of the drawstrings.  I dropped a few Hershey kisses in there too.  I stumbled upon Ziploc bags with different wintry sayings, like WINTER WONDERLAND, BRRRRRR. SHIVER,  LET IS SNOW, so on and so on.  I placed marshmallows, Hershey kisses, and 1 instant hot cocoa packet in it with a piece of blue tissue paper, so the words would pop.  I have the white snowflake bags to the adults and the Ziploc bags to the kids.

GAMES/ACTIVITIES/PRIZES:  I had door prizes for the adults, which were just small trinkets, like a blue beaded picture frame ornaments, plastic printed picture frames, knit hats, and mittens.  We had a whole bunch of toys to give away to the kids since they were all 75% off after Christmas and the week of my birthday.  We played Freeze Dance where the kids danced and jumped around, to music and when the music stopped they had to freeze.  If a kid did not freeze, they were out.   We also played Cold Snowman, which is hot potato with a stuffed snowman for the kids and the adults wanted to play too.  So to spice up the adult version, who ever was caught with the snowman was not only out, but had to take a shot or liquor.  The last 2 people out had to take 2 shots. 

We found nice poker sets on sale at Target for $3.47 to give away for that game.  All other adult prizes were by drawing a guest's name out of a cup.  I wanted to play Frozen T-Shirt contest, but did not have to time.  What you do is purchase xx large white undershirts, soak them, fold them up, and place in your freezer.  The object is to be the first person to get the shirt completely on while it is frozen.  The person can sit on it; pour their drink on it, or any other action to get it to defrost enough to put on. Other games to play, Cold Feet; how many socks can you put on one foot in 30 seconds, and Snowball Throw; how many crumpled white paper balls can you toss into a bucket or basket in 30 seconds.  I really had a blast planning and executing this party since it will be the last one I throw for myself.  I will not be getting older than 30!

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