Oscar Party 2012

Heyhey everyone!
Did you watch the Oscars?? I have to say, I preferred Ricky Gervais last year but this year's show was also very good. Maybe I've just been in England too long, hihi...

Now that I have the time, I really wanted to throw an Oscar party for the bf and me. Only to realise waaaay too late that the show would be on in the middle of the night but we managed to have two dinners so in the end it worked out great :) I got so many ideas off Pinterest and the internet in general and some were even my own ;) I used a lot of things I had in the house already so it was a very creative process. Let's get the party started!

First I made some Oscar teacandle holders. Just like the ones I made for Valentine, I used tissue paper and embellishments (ribbon, cardstock stars and glitter) on jars. I didnt have the nice Nutella ones anymore so normal food jars were used. I chose goldish and black colours for the glam of the Oscars.

I found these fantastic labels here and used them to make bunting. As my printer is currently broken I printed these at the library so they're in black and white, but I used yellow and red paper to give it a bit of colour anyway. The bunting itself is made out ofblack cardstock, and it's tied together with gold ribbon. I printed out one sheet in colour but I had other plans for those labels.

Sadly I couldnt find an Oscar poster anywhere or an Oscar statue, or even a Ken doll to spraypaint gold (dont you just love Pinterest for these amazing ideas?) but I did hang some gold balloons for a finishing touch.

And then... the food! Each nominee for Best Picture got a dish. That was much trickier than anticipated, let me tell you! Of course The Help was easy but movies like Hugo or The Decendants were quite difficult to cater for. So let me show you what I made of it:

First, some bubbly for the appetizers, in style of course :) I really wanted to do this but I just ran out of time... But at least I managed a bow-tie. This was actually leftover from Valentine when we forgot to open the bottle LOL.

For The Artist: caviar on blinis in true black and white style. Also, it's a pun on the silent movie because there is no way you can talk while eating this size blini LOL. I tried to shape the caviar into stars which kind of worked though the picture doesnt do it justice. See the food card? Those are the label I printed in colour, stuck on cardstock, and highlighted with a touch of gold. On a side note, people always react shocked when I mention caviar, but this is not the expensive stuff. This is the £2 a jar stuff from the supermarket so in the end it's cheaper than a prawn cocktail! Just to clarify...

For War Horse: carrots and dip. This was more of an all evening snack than an appetizer so it could remain on the table all night long. Not the most original, but horses like carrots right? ;)

Check out these funny Oscar envelopes I made out of napkins for the entree. I also used gold disposable plates to add extra glam and reduce dishes. Super stylish yet practical! The yellow band around the envelope is again cardstock and I cut out a tiny Oscar statue out of gold wrapping paper.

For Hugo: caramalised onion bruschetta. I hadnt seen the movie, and got this via another website with a suggested Hugo menu and thought it was very fitting, and very French. With some yummy French bread, this was super easy to make.

For The Descendants: rumaki. A friend of mine gave my this idea and after scouring the web for some recipes (I had no clue what this was) I found one on eHow that looked like it could work. I have to admit, the ones with the chicken livers were horrible so we didnt really eat those. Sad but true... But the ones with pineapple (pictured) were gorgeous, the coating was very nice. And at least we had pineapple which is about as Hawaiian as you can get hihi...

For Moneyball: mini hotdogs. I put the ketchup on a side dish as the bf is not a fan and I didnt want to have allocated food. Who knew how much of all this food we'd actually finish!

Of course Moneyball also allowed for beer so we had that too. Well, the bf did anyway. I made sure it look the part though and dressed it up in style with another miniature Oscar statue taped to it.

Time for the main course. New 'envelopes' came out with two of the nominees on the band. For me The Help, I just love that movie! And for the bf The Artist, because after all 'ee iz French ;) The golden stars I cut out of gold wrapping paper using a cookie cutter as a template. I wanted to have two large stars but have you ever tried drawing a star? It's so difficult! I know the theory but after about 10 tries, I opted for lots of smaller stars instead.

For The Tree of Life: fried chicken. Now I know what you're going to say, this is a dish for The Help and I kind of agree, but when I looked up recipes on a 50s/60s favourite dishes website, this came up too so I thought I could use it for this as well. Plus it was easy peasy (I used the prepared version) which was beneficial. No hours of cooking for me this time!

For Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: twice baked potato as a side to the chicken. I had this in New York for the first time and since the movie is all about NY it was a perfect fit. Plus I still had these in the freezer from Valentine's Day so this was excellent!

For Midnight in Paris: a posh French salad. I basically only used the vinaigrette and the idea from the recipe, so I cant really use the same name. How much more Paris can you get? Yes, am sure there are better ways but it had to tie in with the rest of the meal. Plus it had a kickass dressing!

For The Help: Minnie's chocolate pie. This was the first dish that popped into my head for this menu and OMG is it delicious!! I even had to take two pictures! Here you can see it while it's cooling down...

And when served... Doesnt this just look divine? I had to look around a bit as there were about 3 or 4 recipes that claimed to be Minnie's chocolate pie, but I chose this one and think it was the perfect one. Quick, easy and oh so good. I now understand Hilly Holbrooks face of delight when she's eating the pie. Although mine didn't have that very special ingredient that caused Hilly's face to change so quickly! Hihi...

So what happened really was that we had the Oscar dinner on Sunday night while watching the red carpet event (which was still going at midnight so we couldnt even finish that) and on Monday night we watched the actual ceremony while eating the leftovers (there was so much left!) and playing Oscar Bingo and checking the scores on our Oscar Ballots.

The Bingo was so much fun and kind of the reason I planned this dinner party as the bf loved it last year. I found both the bingo and the ballot here. Last year we were struggling with books underneath the forms so this year I made a clipboard out of cardboard, cardstock, and wrapping paper. Super easy and so glamorous: cut out an A4 piece of cardboard, put black cardstock on one side, gold wrapping paper on the other, tape it all together, and stick the bingo form on top. Very stable and chique. The paper Oscar took about an hour to assemble and is black because I really didnt want to do the same again in gold but it looks quite nice anyway. At least I had a statue!

And the winner is... The bf won the bingo though I realised at the very end that I didnt check my diagonal options and could have had bingo aaaaagggeeesss ago! But alas it was too late. We just kept on playing until the person with the most bingos won which was definitely the bf, he had 4 while I only had 2. But I did win the ballot with 6 correct answers for his 4. So we're both winners, yay! Hihi, yes that sounded a bit sad I realise ;) I did want to take some pics with both of us holding the paper Oscar but it was late already and even though I tried, we both looked so tired and horrible that the world is better off not seeing those pictures. LOL. All in all it was a great party with lovely food and lots of laughter. Although I do need to watch more of the nominated movies next year ;)