Theater Popcorn Candle

Clapboard Frame

Clapboard Votives

Grab a handful of DVDs of old school favs, new releases, horror flicks, classic Hollywood, even a ‘Ma and Pa Kettle’ marathon, add popcorn, friends and you have a party!This is a great multigenerational theme that works as well for a kids birthday, a teen graduation, adult celebration or a pre-Oscar night party! Also grand for a prom theme, dance club and bar or bat mitvah!

Want to go all out? Create a red carpet entry, use white twinkle lights mounted on a board around movie posters, spot lights greeting your ’stars’, have everyone dress in 1930s-1940s glam attire and serve a variety of martinis! Cut out, life-size, stand-up photos of stars from the era you are highlighting make great photo-ops. Check out our Hollywood-themed decorations and favors to send everyone home with a fun remembrance.

Contact your local movie theaters about getting the old posters that hang in the lobby. Often they will be more than happy to help you out, especially given enough lead time to collect some for you. For a more causal event, theater style popcorn machines can be rented from our local party rental agency. We have popcorn bags, just like the theater variety! You can also send dozens of letters out to actors’ PR firms to get 8 x 10 glossy ‘fan photos’ to frame with inexpensive dime-store (ok, dollar store) frames. Use them on tables, hanging like they are displayed in the hip restaurants stars flock to, and even in the powder room!

If watching a film is not part of the night’s main entertainment, group several flat screen TVs together and run different films as ‘background’ on mute.

I hope that these few ideas get your creative juices flowing… this theme can be used over and over, just tweaked in different ways to completely change the look and feel! Have fun!!

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: We all LOVE a favor!

How it is presented really sets the tone of the gift and a clever, stunning or beautiful container can make the simplest of favors seem quite grand!

Gerbera Daisies Adorn Classically Crisp White Boxes

Stylish and pretty, these floral favors are perfect for showers and garden weddings. Each elegant white gloss favor box is topped with a gorgeous silk flower in your choice of pink gerber daisy or tangerine gerber daisy. The boxes are filled with white chocolate amorini hearts and accented with matching organza ribbon. Each box measures 2×2x2 inches.

The Perfect Pair Candles

The perfect pear for the perfect pair theme! The realistic pear shaped candles feature a distinctive pear scent. Each candle is individually shrink wrapped and the pair is elegantly tucked in an ivory organza bag gathered and tied at its top by a satin ribbon and attached “Perfect Pair” themed thank you tag.

Lavender Sachets with Gerber Daisy Theme

Add a trendy, fragrant favor to your event with our Gerber Daisy Lavender Sachets! Each handmade sachet begins with a 3 x 4″ organza sachet, filled with fresh French lavender. The sachets are finished with an oversized silk gerber daisy, 3 inches in diameter. Your choice of pink gerber/orange sachet, tangerine gerber/pink sachet, pink gerber/pink sachet, or tangerine gerber/orange sachet. You are free to mix colors.

Watering Can with Sunflower Seeds

Perfect for Fall bridal showers and weddings, this cute “watering can” favor comes with a colorful seed packet of sunflowers, perfect for late summer and Fall planting. Complete directions are on the back side of the seed packets. They are placed in a cute galvanized metal can. The watering cans are accented by a warm silk sunflower accented in shades of warm yellow and pale orange. Each can measures 3.25” tall. Each seed packet contains about 10 large seeds.

See many more favor ideas on www.LovedTheParty.com !!

Fall's Glory!

In Texas yesterday it was 103 degrees… no wonder I’m think of Fall and all the great ideas I have for fun parties! While the stores are beginning to place their Christmas holiday wares on the shelves, I am longing for the crisp mornings (not the 85 degrees I awoke to this morning at 5:00 a.m.), the cool northern breezes and all the wonderful colors of the season: pumpkin, amber, greens, golds, russet…

So what to celebrate? There’s Halloween and Thanksgiving, of course, but there is also football tailgating to be done, birthdays to honor, engagements and weddings to celebrate, the changing of leaves to be admired!

A visit to a pumpkin patch can be turned from simple outing to a great party by including several families, special snacks for the pumpkin choosing, a pumpkin carving activity and dinner afterwards! Even if the ‘patch’ is a load a pumpkins in a church parking lot or lawn, it can still be great fun!

While the air is crisp and before it turns bone chilling, an evening outdoor gathering is made all the better with an outdoor fire in a chiminea or a bonfire if you have plenty of room and no burn ban restrictions! Add mugs of chowder, hot apple toddies, crusty bread and Divine cheeses for a simple supper or go all out with a wine tasting, grilled meats and topped off with gourmet chocolate-caramel apples! Candles flickering when bonfires and fireplaces are unavailable, set the mood for a harvest event.

More ideas will follow shortly! I’m gearing up for fall… I better turn the thermostat down to ’slightly frosty’ to get in the mood!

On this May morning in Texas it is a refreshing upper 40s with clear skies and flowers blooming. As I was sipping on my coffee and working, I was wishing for more mornings like this before it gets so incredibly hot and humid that we gasp when we open the door in the morning. I was thinking that a breakfast gathering would be great fun on such a beautiful fine day (cloudy and rainy most of the past weekend)… then I remembered that it was Monday. Which actually might be the best time of all to have a breakfast party… Start the week off in a festive mood. A wrap around party could also be fun: Breakfast on Monday, drinks and dinner on Friday with the same folks on Friday to end the week in style!

Yesterday involved a planning meeting for a mission trip to help with the Hurricane Ike cleanup in Galveston.with a group from our church. Nine months later, Galveston is reopened for tourists, however the locals are really hurting and there is much to be done. My husband volunteered us to help out after a trip there in February shocked us with the damage. It just hasn’t made the media swirl the way Katrina did. (pun intended)

So, Husband and I will be in charge of cooking 3 meals a day for the group going down to work. Needless to say, in the midst of meal planning and working around various food allergy issues, I decided that I needed to turn those evening meals into ‘an event’. We will have special nights (Cookouts, Candlelit suppers, Mexican) and I plan to bring appropos decorations to make the dining hall fun! My son says that I come from the ‘Land of Never Leave Well Enough Alone’. That wouldn’t be any fun!

I spent yesterday at my niece’s drill team tryouts as the ‘designated adult’. My sister makes her nervous, so she asked me to come be with her… for the second year in a row. Which was fine with my sister, Elise. When my daughter was a teenager, Elise had more success than I did during communication blackouts, or when I was just a bother to my child. That is usually the nature of the teenage daughter and mom relationship. So that is how I came to be at tryouts.

While some moms spent the day pacing up and down the gym, I chatted with my niece, listened as she practiced her interview questions and when she needed some down time, I worked on LovedTheParty.com.

My niece made the officer line, but was very disappointed not to have made captain of the team… especially when everyone (meaning other members of the team) had assumed that she would. Which made me glad that we had not planned a big celebration dinner!

It was that thought that made me realize the kindness of creative planning for such a celebration, be it an election, team championship, or even an engagment. I’ve come to the conclusion that it is important to plan ‘backwards’ by having the elements for a party ready to put into action and have guests standing by, but not to implement anything ahead of time. It doesn’t always go the way that we assume it will. How much kinder it is to be able to gracefully pull back so allow the ‘disappointed one’ time to regroup in private. Some people may be ready to grieve their loss in a celebratory way, but that should be their call.

Back at the gym, while I was disappointed that my niece was not named captain, I am pleased that the girl who won that coveted position is the daughter of a longtime friend of mine and had really worked hard to get the position while remaining a very sweet girl. Go team!