the joys of love: Favorite Things Party 2012

Favorite Things!

If you know me, you know I love to host parties, and I try to find any excuse to plan one. Ever since I was pregnant with Grayson, I sort of lost my motivation to be a hostess. I was so uncomfortable while I was pregnant that the last thing I wanted to do was throw a party. Well now that I am not pregnant, I am back to my old self and have been itching to plan a party, I just needed a reason to have one. I started googling ideas for a party to throw for a bunch of women. I stumbled upon a blog that wrote about a Favorite Things party. I had never heard about a party like this, but I was excited. So the planning began!

These are the invites I created using Picnik.

{which now is closed down, and I am so bummed because I had just figured out how to use it}

I wrapped the invites in kraft cards and tied them in twine before I mailed them out.

"Brown paper packages tied up with string..."

The basics of a Favorite Things party are this:

Each guest comes to the party with 5 of their favorite thing.

{You choose one thing you love, buy 5 of that thing and bring it to share. We had a spending limit that the item you brought had to cost $6 or less}

When everyone arrived I had each guest write their name down on 5 different pieces of paper.

We threw all of those names in a jar to use later in the evening when we all discussed our favorite things.

For the food I decided to do a bruschetta bar. I had a basket full of toasted french bread and 4 different types of bruschetta that you could assemble yourself. I put little cards next to each type and listed the ingredients in order so everyone would know how to make it.

The bruschetta bar was a big hit! I think everyone had a great time making their own bruschetta and I saw many of the women go back a few times to make more of their favorites. Such a fun idea for a large group of people.

Since we had beautiful weather that day we set up desserts outside on our patio. We had 3 desserts to choose from. Salted caramel cookies, homemade Earl Grey Macarons from my cousin Capri, and fresh raspberries stuffed with a chocolate chip. Just a few little bite size sweet treats are perfect for any girl party.

The party would not have been complete without some girly drinks. We had 2 wines to choose from, frozen strawberry lemonade, or water. The wine definitely went fast ;)

Since I wanted to use my cute glasses I knew I needed a creative way to label each glass so we didn't get them mixed up. I had recently found chalk board contact paper. It has a sticky back, you can cut it to any size, and it is removable. I used my circle punch and made name labels using a chalk pen. It was so much fun to see everyones reaction when I told them it was chalk board. I will definitely use this idea again.

After everyone arrived and filled up on food and wine, we started the Favorite Things part of our night. All of the goodies we set up on one table. I loved how it looked like a cute little store full of all the great stuff. I started off and introduced what I brought. After explaining my favorite thing, I drew 5 names out of the jar and those 5 people all received my favorite thing. We continued through all of the things on the table and each person explained what they brought, then I would draw out 5 names and those 5 people would receive something new. In the end everyone left with 5 new favorite things.

We had such a fun night with all the girls. We all agreed this type of party should be done every 6 months or so. Everyone enjoyed getting new favorite things to try we can't wait to have this kind of party again.