Boogers on the Wall

I have never been to a bachelorette party, so I don’t know why I thought I could plan one. But my baby sister’s getting married this Saturday, and as her maid of honor, I was determined to throw her one heck of a party.

Panicked that I wouldn’t know what to do or how to decorate, I cracked open my laptop and started web surfing. Thank heavens for Pinterest.

We held the dinner/mini spa bachelorette party last weekend and I don’t know about the other girls, but I had a great time.

Here’s how I threw it all together:

Invitations

First off, the invites. After looking at a couple of really cute invitation ideas online, I decided to throw together my own invitations using Photoshop and InDesign. I started with a tiffany blue background that I pulled off of one of my favorite royalty-free clip art sites: clker.com

Then I placed a red rectangular box on the bottom and played around with different fonts to come up with the text. When I thought it looked decent I took a .pdf version to the local copy store and had it printed on light-cream cardstock.

Piece of cake.

Games

If you notice, on the bottom of the invite it asks each guest to bring six $1 bills and a pair of underwear that best matches their personality or relationship with my sister. Those pieces were essential to our games. 

We played the underwear game found here. We couldn’t stop laughing at the different pairs of panties – especially a colorful lacy, top that we couldn’t figure out at first.

We used the six $1 bills to play a newlywed game that I like to call “What do they know?” I videotaped the groom answering several questions about himself as well as about my sister. Then we watched his responses while my sister told us her correct answers. If her answers matched up with his, she got $1. We put her winning money in her Honeymoon Fund Jar that I made her for one of her bridal showers. I got the newlywed game questions here.

Party Favors

I decided it would be fun/relaxing to do pedicures at the party. My mom found a great deal on pedicure sets so each guest got an emery board, scrubbing stone, file, toe spacers and two pairs of clippers. My mom also got a great deal on nail polish so I threw in one each for the girls along with a Hershey’s Cookies n’ Cream bar and a Kit Kat (two of my sister’s favorites.)

I made each guest a bright red sash. I bought stiff 2” ribbon from the craft store.

Then I cut out white vinyl BRIDESMAID letters on my Silhouette SD cutting machine.

I used double-sided tape to put the vinyl on the ribbon and smoothed it down with my handy pot scrubber.

Then I peeled off the tape and put a dab of hot glue at the base of the sash. They were tacky, but fun.

I put everything in big red tubs that I found at the local Dollar Store. The tubs doubled as basins that we used to soak our tired feet.

Decorations

I saw a really cute banner here that said From Miss to Mrs. So I whipped out my cutting machine again and cut out block letters and chunky hearts.

I draped brown hemp-style ribbon through the letters and spaced it evenly over my sister’s kitchen table.

I also saw a hanging garland made of paper cups here. I bought a pack of kids cups and a pack of thick, red cardstock. I cut open one of the cups and laid it flat.

I made a pattern with the cup so that I could trace it and wrap paper over it.

I traced what felt like a million of those patterns. Then I started cutting them out and gluing them onto the paper cups.

What was my 10-month-old doing at this point?

Making a mess.

After I had all of the cups covered in red paper – I did a few in blue that I had left over from the Miss to Mrs. banner – I grabbed a kitchen knife and started cutting small x shapes in the top of the cups.

They all ended up looking like this.

Then I stuck them on a strand of 100 mini Christmas lights.

I thought they turned out really cute and the lights were really fun.

What’s a bachelorette party without a tacky veil? I had left over 2” ribbon so I tied a giant red bow.

Then I bought 1 yard of tulle and set it out flat on my floor. I bunched the top of the tulle in one hand.

Then I threaded a needle and wove it through the top by hand, gathering the tulle about ½ inch from the top. I pulled it tight and grabbed the red bow.

I sewed the red bow in the center of the gathered bunch. Then I stitched on a bobby pin so we could attach it to my sister’s head.

Food

For the food I cooked what I like to call Café Rio chicken salads. (I got a killer recipe from my friend Jaclyn). I cooked spicy chicken, sweet rice, easy black beans and creamy lime-cilantro  dressing and salsa (from my friend Racheal’s recipe). We used lettuce, cheese, sour cream and tortilla chips to top it all off.

Here are the recipes I used:

Spicy Chicken

1 small bottle Zesty Italian salad dressing
1 TBSP chili powder
1 TBSP cumin
3 cloves minced garlic
5 pounds chicken breast

Cook in a crock pot 4-6 hours, then shred chicken.

Sweet Rice

6 cups water
4 tsp chicken bouillon
4 tsp minced garlic
1/2 bunch cilantro
1 small can green chilies
3/4 tsp salt
1 TBSP butter
1/2 white onion chopped
3 cups rice

Blend cilantro, chilies, onion and 1 cup of the water in a blender. Add all other ingredients (except rice) and blend. Put rice in pan or rice cooker and then add blended ingredients. Cook 20-30 minutes in pan or normal time for rice cooker.

Salsa

1 large can tomatoes…any kind. I got the petite cut
4 yellow peppers (winco is the only store I could find them in the winter)
1 jalepeno pepper
1 anaheim pepper
cilantro
salt to taste
lemon juice 1-2
lime juice 2-4
4 cloves garlic

Put all of the ingredients in a food processor and blend.

Here’s a link to the Easy Black Beans recipe.

Here’s a link to the Creamy Lime-Cilantro Dressing recipe.

For dessert I mixed up two boxes of my favorite fudge brownie mixes. I tried to whip up some cream but that didn’t work so my sister’s friend Mindy came to my rescue with some Cool Whip. We layered our treats with brownies, Cool Whip, then strawberries, then brownies, Cool Whip and strawberries.

Delicious! It was a great way to end the party. We ate our treats while soaking our feet and watching one of my sister’s favorite movies: Casper.

My first bachelorette party was a lot of work but also a lot of fun. It’s nice to have a reason to make some crafts and try out some of my Pinterest pins.

Hopefully my sister had as much fun as I did.

As far as screaming goes, I haven’t done very well lately. I am starting anew. I went 28 days without yelling at my kids, then I lost it last week. No I am back at the beginning at 1 day. You can read about my yell-free challenge here.