{plaid party: the drinks}

Out of all the plaid party posts, this one has got to be the most important one right!?!?  No holiday party is complete without some festive drinks.  Besides having the usual beer, wine and champagne available to our guests, we also whipped up a big patch of whiskey punch and hot spiked cider.  You have seen the whiskey punch on this blog before, but we did change up the recipe a little bit for this party.  Here are the ingredients and measurements for a party sized serving:

Plaid Party Whiskey Punch

• 1 handle of bourbon (Jim Beam, Maker's Mark, etc)
• 12 oz real grenadine
• 1 1/2 cups fresh orange juice
• 1 1/2 cups fresh lemon juice
• 3/4 cup of simple syrup
• 8 heavy dashes angostura bitters
• lemon peels from 5 to 6 lemons

1. Add all the ingredients into a drink dispenser or extra large pitcher, give it a good stir and you are ready to go.  We had about 40 people at our party and this entire recipe of punch disappeared in about an hour.  We ended up making another batch, so if you plan on having a big party I recommend that you double the recipe above.

The hot spiked cider is a great holiday recipe that we have made for our pumpkin carving party in the past.  Normally, we keep it hot by letting guests serve themselves from a pot on the stove which we keep on a low heat setting.  Our friends generously allowed us to use their unopened slowcooker for the plaid party.  I highly recommend using a crock pot or slow cooker if you plan on serving this so that you are able to keep the drink in a central place rather than on your stove! Here is a party sized recipe:

Party Sized Spiked Cider

• 2 containers of spiced cider- the ones we used are from Trader Joe's
• 2 fifths of Mount Gay Dark Rum (or 1 handle if you can find it)-also available at Trader Joe's
• 2 to 3 table spoons of mulling spices (this is optional since the cider is already spiced, but it does add a little extra flavor)
• optional garnish: caramel squares cut in half and speared on to a drink stirrer

1. warm the spiced cider and mulling spices in a slow cooker or a large pot on the stove
2. once the cider is to the desired drinking temperature, add all of the rum
3. garnish with a piece of caramel on a stir stick

The plaid party was incredible, I had so much fun and it is definitely one my favorite parties we have thrown.  We may even make it an annual thing...

{plaid party: the sweets}

The sweets for our plaid party were similar to the savory snacks since they were a mix of home-made and store bought items.   I have actually never done a dessert spread with so many different choices before and I realized after the fact that most of the choices had some sort of chocolate in them- not that anyone was complaining, but I think next time it would be better to have more of a mix.  Here is what we served for the sweets at our holiday party:

• assortment of cookies from Trader Joes: Salted Caramel Milk Chocolate, Dark Chocolate Sprinkle Rounds & Cranberry Pistachio Cookie Wreaths. 

• mint chocolate pirouette sticks

• home-made chocolate dipped marshmallows, instructions here

• chocolate dipped pretzels, you can see my very first blog post about these here.

• snickerdoodle cupcakes, recipe here

• chocolate bark with bacon, cayenne pepper and toasted slivered almonds- another amazing find like the bratwurst bites that will surely become a party staple. Instructions for this are below.

Originally, I had planned on doing a sweet themed chocolate bark, but we ended up having a little bit of bacon left over from the bacon wrapped dates so we decided to take the bark in a more savory direction.  First we cooked up a few strips of bacon, let them cool and cut them into tiny pieces.  I melted full pound of milk chocolate from Trader Joes and spread it about 1/4 inch thick onto a piece of parchment paper on top of a sheet pan.  Immediately, we topped it with the bacon pieces, some toasted slivered almonds and a healthy sprinkle of cayenne pepper.  After sitting in the fridge overnight, you can break the bark up into pieces.  This would make an awesome Christmas gift paired with a nice bottle whiskey.

 Up next tomorrow- the last plaid party post: the drinks!

{plaid party: the decor}

{muji in his bowtie}

This past Saturday, we hosted our plaid themed holiday party!! I had so much fun and I loved how all our guests really got into the theme.  Overall, we were definitely going for more of a "tacky plaid" look for the decorations.  I would say the end result was basically an complete onslaught of plaid.  Once again, the downtown LA fabric district and Moskatel's were an incredible resource for craft supplies for the decorations 

 {champagne flutes with plaid fabric scraps}

 {vintage festive cocktail napkins}

 {mistletoe hanging}

 {supplies for cupcake toppers}

{tinsel pom cupcake toppers}

{view from the living room}

The biggest DIY we did for this party was the fabric strip garland that my good friend Kay helped out with.  This is by far one of the easiest garlands I have made, although it can be a little time consuming (especially if you don't own a rotary cutter).  After cutting up five or six different plaid and solid fabrics into 20 inch long strips (about 1 inch wide), you simply attach them in a random pattern to a piece of ribbon by typing them in a loop knot.  Click here to check out a more detailed tutorial.

 {sometimes we can even convince chris to help with the crafts}

{garland placed on the deck}

Here is a sneak peek of tomorrow's post about the photobooth set up:

Be sure to check back all this week for additional posts about the food and drinks we served.

{plaid party invites}

One of my favorite parts of hosting a big party at our place is designing and sending out real invites.  Our plaid party is coming up and I knew I wanted the invites to be simple, but still quirky and fun.  I took a lot of inspiration from this image on Pinterest and whipped up this invite using some fonts from dafont.com.  The envelopes were purchased on amazon and I used the leftover Kraft sticker sheets from our Save The Dates for the envelope address wraps.  We normally print out the invites ourselves as well, but Columbia printing did such a great (and reasonable!) job on our Save the dates that we went back to them for these as well.