Party Ideas

Party ideas collected from magazines, newspapers and the internet.

Parties are a lot of fun but sometimes they can be a lot of work to plan. We try to plan ahead by saving ideas when we see them.

As we are reading magazines, newspapers or even on the internet, when we come across a party idea that we like we cut it out or make a copy and save it in our household organization binder. This binder is explained in our January 18 column and is at the blog site listed below.

The latest ideas we used was for our daughter’s birthday. We found a soup recipe in the Relish insert of the Daily News last December. Soups and stews are good choices for special occasions in winter. This one was headlined “Angel Harvest Vegetable and Potato Soup.” We did customize it by adding stew meat to it. And to make it large enough for the number of guest we were expecting we also increased the amount of vegetables and seasonings.

To go along with the soup we made homemade dinner rolls. Then instead of birthday cake we made three pies. One was orange meringue which was a recipe we found in the same Relish insert as the soup. The other two were lemon meringue and kiwi with a crumb topping.

In the past we have done parties with themes like a Hawaiian holiday. We got this idea from the June/July 2003 Taste of Home magazine. For this party we followed the recipes pretty closely.

The luau centerpiece was fruit threaded onto wooden skewers and inserted into a whole pineapple. The pineapple was placed in the center of a molded blue gelatin ring. Around the gelatin was more fruit. At each corner of the centerpiece were palm trees made out of half a bell pepper for the leaves and carrot trunk, mounted on half a potato.

The dinner included Polynesian meatballs, tropical tossed salad and rice. The drink was pineapple juice with lemon sherbet and ice cubes blinded in. The cake was in the shape of a volcano.

Some birthdays we celebrate with a dinner made up of the birthday persons favorite foods. Then the cake is a fun shape such as a giant hamburger, piano, castle, kite or train.

One idea we have not used yet is a teddy bear picnic theme. This idea came from the February/March 2000 Taste of Home magazine. They had ideas for a “sandwich bear,” “teddy carrot bars” and “beary cute cookies.” The sandwich bear is made using different size round bread and rolls, and then filled with sandwich fixings. The teddy carrot bars are topped with purchased Teddy Grahams. The cookies are round with ears added and for the face two M&M eyes and a chocolate candy kiss nose.

The teddy bear theme could be used for a baby shower or a birthday party for someone partial to bears.

We are always on the lookout for new ideas. Party ideas from our readers are welcome. Please comment below.