10th Annual Oscar Party

Sunday was our 10th Annual Oscar Party. It was a fantastic night. We had a house full of beautiful, creative people. Since it was our 10th, we decided to make it a little extra special. It was a "kid free" party (except for 2 in utero) and we dressed up.  We had an actual program with a write in ballot. This was our 3rd Washington state party and I was just overwhelmed to see people so engaged. God has given us some amazing friends out here and we are so blessed. It is the people who make this party so much fun year after year. We are not in a phase of life that permits us to see every movie nominated like we used to in the past. There were some fun moments on the award show itself, but the people that filled our living room to overflowing are who made this night a success. Our friends, Ben and Alexis, stole the voting with 14 correct winning predictions. I believe Nate was second with 10, but I may be wrong. The distinction of  least correct, at 4, was Nicole. Our first prize took home gift certificates to Fandango and second place brought home the soundtrack from les Miserables. Last prize also received an AMC gift card. 

Once again, Ian saved the day. He came up both Saturday and Sunday to help us set up and prepare. My attention was a little divided between this and a shower for one of those precious in utero children who attended our party. It was a weekend full of celebrations. 

Ralph made a fantastic Chocolate Peanut Butter Cheesecake with Chocolate Glaze as a cake/centerpiece dish. It is amazing! He also made "Lincoln Logs" aka pretzels with a chocolate fondue. It was equally awesome. I would suggest you make these some time soon. We were again wowed by people's creativity in food from "Unexpected Sandwiches" for The Hobbit to a "Sugar Rush" cake for Wreck It Ralph to "Build Your Own Frankenweenie" for Frankenweenie. Obviously, not an exhaustive list. Our "top voted dishes" were the "Sugar Rush" cake and, someone correct me if I'm wrong, "Pesto Mac and Argo-at Cheese." First place was awarded a Fandango gift certificate and second took home Argo on DVD/Blu-Ray. Everything was delicious! 

All-in-all, a supremely successful night. Thank you to everyone who came and made it such a special evening!

Oscar Food

As soon as I saw Inception, I knew what I was making for our Oscar Party. This was a HUGE switch for me as I'm often scrambling for ideas. Mostly been scrambling since we've had kids and don't really get to the movies as much as we once did. Not a bad trade, just life as we know it (pun intended). I immediately thought of the trend of baking things inside of cake.

My first thought was maybe I'd try my hand at a Pumpple Cake. Then I felt overwhelmed and scrapped that idea. I started Googling and found this blog: Bake It In A Cake. The coolest thing, besides the part where she held my hand and showed me exactly how to make what I had been dreaming up in my head, was that she is local!! A local Seattle blogger! How fun is that?!

After drooling over her blog for a few weeks, we finally decided on this wonderfulness. Oh, and it was wonderfulness. To quote my brother (who was referring to his first taste of fettuccine al fredo) "It was like a cloud in my mouth." I have no idea what that means, but it felt appropriate.

My mini pie crusts (top left); my improvised double boiler making my pudding (top right); finished products (bottom and background pics)

I used the basic pie crust recipe in my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, the "Best Chocolate Pudding" recipe from Cooking Fun: 121 Simple Recipes to Make with Kids (I found saved in my One Note, not sure where I got it. Super easy and yummy, though.), the Paula Deen recipe she recommended, and Bake It In a Cake's buttercream frosting recipe (I even added the cocoa for the swirl effect). They were really not that hard once the steps were broke down for me, the principles understood and I split it up a bit (pudding and crust one day, cupcakes and frosting the next). I may even try my hand at one of those Pumpple Cakes if I can find the right occasion one of these days.

8th Annual Oscar Party

I cannot believe that we just hosted our 8th Oscar Party! Where have the years gone?! I had so much fun looking through the pics of past parties. Such fun memories. Check out 2008, 2009 and 2010. Some things have stayed the same and we added a few new things this year! One of the fun things that we added this year was "swag." Everybody was sent home with a bag of movie theater popcorn and theater candy. We've kept my "white flower, old Hollywood glamor-type" bouquet idea for our centerpiece. Our Oscar winning movie memorabilia made another appearance (when it wasn't being kidnapped by a mysterious 2 year old!). Once again there were prizes for the most right guesses on the ballots and the least and a few in between as well as a prize for the group's pick on most creative food. Gift cards to Regal cinema, Oscar winning movies (old and new) and of course, movie popcorn filled the line up of prizes this year.

We were without our big Yoda this year (he lives in OH) so we had to come up with a new "photo booth" idea. We had a ton of fun with our back drop and props so we *almost* didn't miss Yoda.

Obviously, another big difference was the people! This was our first PNW Oscar Party. We couldn't have been more thrilled with the turnout and how creative people were. In fact, I'm quite sure the majority of people in the room had never *gasp* never watched the Oscars in their entirety before. Shocking, isn't it? Mmmhmm. They were troopers, though. Watched the whole thing with us, got creative with the food and gave Ralph a run for his money in Scene It movie trivia. What more could we ask for?

On the people theme, our Dayton friends were not left out of the festivities. Our dear friend, Amanda, and friends, Phil and Kristi, decided to carry on the tradition and made it their own! They did such a fantastic job. All our friends there brought their collective creative games and made some FOOD.  I was drooling on my computer screen, guys! Seriously! We had a chance to connect the two parties via Skype. Can I tell you how blessed I feel to live in this modern age?! It's awesome. Just awesome.

The girls seemed to have as much fun as the adults. Nugget, of course, was super social and loved having people there to play with and show off for. Zita was the most social we've seen her in months. It was such a joy to have all four of us involved in "hosting" the party. Already thinking ahead to next year's 9th Annual Oscar Party and preparing for 2013's 10th (big things planned, big things). Hope to see you all there!

7th Annual Oscar Party

It's that time of year again! We once again held our annual Oscar Party. This year we intentionally kept it small. It was so much fun to see people bring their creativity out again. Our idea came straight from Disney's Family Fun site. We used a Martha Stewart recipe for the cupcakes and the frosting. I was pretty happy with them. My wonderful husband and dear friend Ian did all the cleaning and prep. It was wonderful. Somehow I still ended up on my feet preparing most of the day but the boys took care of all the truly tough stuff.

 

Below is most of our "red carpet moments." It was so nice of Yoda to come out and be with us agian this year! Nugget had a great time interacting with Yoda and baby Deelebug! I didn't get a picture, unfortunately, but you should have seen her interacting with Phil! She just stared and stared--no discernible expression on her face. She was just intrigued. Then when she was on the couch next to him with Daddy she was fascinated with his flower tattoo. She kept pointing to it and just barely touching it. It was pretty cute!

I think a great time was had by all! Thank you so much to everyone who came and helped make it such a fun evening. There was even a baby last night to top the evening off! (Not ours--the other pregnant lady! Hee, hee!)

Check out our parties from years past:

• 6th Annual Oscar Party
• 5th Annual Oscar Party

6th Annual Oscar Party

This was our first party post-baby. I must say it forced me to be more organized that's for sure. I cannot leave things to the last minute because I never know what she's going to need. We also threw in our first long day away from her this weekend. Actually, it was Daddy's first day away from her since he works from home.

This was such a great year for the Oscar's. The top 5 were all real contenders. We were thrilled to see Slumdog Millionaire win so many awards including Best Picture!

We had a wonderful group of friends gather again in our home to watch the event. Our friend Kristi made the gorgeous cake above! We were so thrilled she dreamed this up. Each layer was a different flavor--french vanilla, caramel, red velvet, devil's food/french vanilla marble. So YUMMY! Great job, Kristi! Ralph and I made Heath Bar Dessert for Heath Ledger and Watergate Salad for Frost/Nixon. People were so creative this year! Amanda made this creative display of cupcakes.
Our friends, Dan and Cat, made this creative house out of Rice Krispie treats for the short animated film "La Maison en Petits Cubes." I absolutely love seeing all of our friends creativity and the different ways everyone thinks!

Every year we give away prizes for the person who can guess the most number of winners, the person who guesses the least, brings the most creative food, does the best in movie trivia during commercial breaks, etc. Our reigning champ, Eric, who admittedly sees the least Oscar nominated films, won again with 17 out of 24. Very impressive! He won movie tickets, popcorn and drinks for 2 at a local theater. The second place winners received DVD's, Dark Knight and Wall-E. For the amazing cake, Kristi, took home Kung Fu Panda. Phil took home Blockbuster gift cards for his prowess at movie trivia. We had an amazing 3-way tie for last place this year. They split two Blockbuster gift cards and the movie, The Departed, between the 3 of them.

We had so much fun! Thank you to everyone who came and made our party such a great success!

After the Oscars

We had such a great time at our Oscar party last night! I always try to class up the house and decorations by using gold, black, silver, red and crystal. This year we got a HUGE boquet of white flowers--think old classy Hollywood On the drink table, I used a white table cloth, a red runner to mimick the red carpet (thany you Rachael Ray). Also courtesy of Rachael Ray, I got white napkins and drew black lines on them and where they met I put a gold seal. They looked like the envelopes--except this year they used red seals. Oh, well. I was happy with the results. I picked up some red burlap fabric on sale and used that for our red carpet. Ralph picked up some really fun prizes. We have used Blockbuster gift cards for the last few years so we of course used those again this year. We also gave away a "Juno" soundtrack, an "Enchanted" soundtrack, "Michael Clayton" on DVD and two "date nights" (two tickets to a movie, popcorn, and something else--Ralph got them). Everyone seemed to have a great time.
We served hot apple cider, a champagne punch (minus the simple syrup), French press coffee, and water with lemon. The punch is a wonderful light, refreshing punch. It serves quite a few people and is really easy to make! We had some really creative food again this year. I just picked a couple to show. Our friends Jeff and Sarah made the "There Will Be Blood Pudding." Jeff spent all afternoon on the structers. Kelly made the "Mrs. Lovett's Meat Pies" for "Sweeney Todd." I have to admit--I loved what I made. They are called "Texas Millionaires." They are caramel, pecans and chocolate. So yummy! I made them for "Charlie Wilson's War"--about a politician who surrounded himself with Texas millionaires.
I will go into the dresses in a later post but overall no huge fashion blunders--some should look at hiring a new stylist and some should maybe get one, but overall I loved the dresses!

The Road to the Oscars Part 5

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The Road to the Oscars Part 4

Hey, all! Sorry for my blogging absence this past week! It's my four day week, my housekeeper couldn't come this week, we have the Oscar party on Sunday and we started working out this week. I don't have enough hours in the day. Here are my picks for the Oscar dresses. I promised you a survey but I fear this post is too long as it is. I will post the survey on Saturday and the results on Sunday. Hope you are all doing well! Here is a question for you (for those who cannot make the Oscar party): If you were coming to our party, what Oscar inspired food would you bring?

The Road to the Oscars Part 3

Hello, all, from near Port Clinton, OH. Ralph planned a romantic get-a-way for us this Valentine's weekend. We are holed up in a beautiful bed and breakfast. We have a large king sized bed, a jacuzzi tub for 2 and a fireplace. I am quite excited to just RELAX! We have not done that in a while. Here are the last of the dresses. Next week you will get to vote on who should wear the dresses! I'll have a special edition next Saturday with our picks!








A Little Scary










Orange is the new pink

















Navy drape










Flapper dress

















La Perla










Gray sheer

The Road to the Oscars Part 2

There were so many options for deciding on dresses! I think I WAY overthought this. Should I look for dresses I like? Should I look for unique Oscar dresses? Should I study pictures of what each girl has worn in the past and try to find on in their own style? And the options go on and on. I finally decided for a mixture. Mostly they will be dresses I liked for some reason as well as some "strikinly unique" Oscar-worthy dresses sure to cause discussion for weeks after the fact!




Metallic chic







Chanel





Armani


















Ann Klein









The 80's are back!