Beatles Birthday Party!

This weekend I hosted a combined birthday party for myself and my friend Mike. Both of our birthdays are actually in about a week, but we figured people would be busy with Easter stuff next weekend, so this weekend worked nicely for the party! I wanted to have a Beatles theme because Mike and I both really like them, and so do most of our friends. Lots of planning, baking, and decorating went into this party and it was all sooooo worth it! It turned out great! Here are some pictures from Saturday night. Enjoy!

Here's a picture of the Octopus's Garden Salad Bar before the food was set out. I had lots of fun decorating this table. I think the bright colors fit with the psychedelic theme of the Beatles! :)

Here's the table filled with food!

Barbecued 'Blackbird' Wings- I was pretty lazy with these and just used premade boneless chicken wings that were on sale at the store, but they were still pretty tasty according to Ben. I wasn't a huge fan, but I don't really like processed chicken so that was my biggest problem with them.

Sgt. Pepperoni Pizza (there are pepperoni on those pizzas they are just hidden beneath the cheese!) Here is my favorite pizza recipe:

http://www.cdkitchen.com/recipes/recs/525/Pizza_Hut_Original_Pan_Pizza41605.shtml

This recipe always turns out delicious (if you like a thick crusted pizza!)

'Yellow Submarine' Sandwich Loaves with Mean Mr. Mustard frowning in the background haha. The sandwich loaves are just frozen bread dough filled with butter, ham, salami, cheddar and mozzarella cheese. Then I sprinkle the dough with Italian Herbs and Monterey Jack cheese.

Diggin' in

'Ginger Sling with a Pineapple Heart' Punch. This reference is kind of obscure, it comes from the song "Savoy Truffle" and I couldn't find a good recipe for a ginger sling so I made one up. This is just pineapple juice, frozen lemonade, water, ginger ale, and fresh pineapple slices.

Dessert Table!

'Cream Tangerine' shots! These are also a "Savoy Truffle" reference. I made these up too. They're just a slice of tangerine inside a shot glass filled with 1/4 shot peach schnapps and topped with homemade citrus flavored whipped cream.

Tangerines from the 'Tangerine trees' These are the same jello shots I made for the Pirate Party. They are so yummy! I doubled the batch this time. It's just 2 packets of orange jello with 1/2 cup of the water replaced with peach schnapps. They taste like sunshine.

'Marshmallow Pie' from "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" This is another made up recipe. I wanted to make something that tasted kind of like s'mores so I filled a graham cracker crust with chocolate ganache then broiled a layer of mini-marshmallows on top. In hindsight I wish I had used milk chocolate instead of semi-sweet, but that's how I always am! I prefer milk chocolate to dark/semi-sweet any day!

'Coffee Dessert (Yeah, you know it's good news!') Another "Savoy Truffle" reference because that song is just loaded with delicious sounding desserts. Another made up recipe. For this, I simply added around a 1/4 cup of super strong black coffee to the pudding mixture from the trifle recipe I posted earlier.

Chocolate Covered 'Strawberry Fields' I am beyond obsessed with these! I think they are such pretty colors!

All we (my awesome neighbor Vicky and I) did was color some almond bark green, dip the strawberries and then color coconut green for the grass! Warning: when you add food coloring to almond bark, it changes the consistency really quickly. That's why these look a bit... umm... rustic? I don't care though, the colors are pretty enough to make me forget about their imperfections!

'I heard it's your Birthday' cake and 'Savoy Truffles' (Oreo truffles) Oreo truffles recipe is as follows: Pulse 3 rows of Oreos in a blender until you get fine crumbs, mix with 1 package of cream cheese and 1 tsp vanilla. Refrigerate 30 minutes. Roll into 1 inch balls. Refrigerate 30 minutes. Dip in white chocolate.

Another view of the cake and truffles! The cake was french vanilla with raspberry preserves between the layers and cream cheese frosting. Those little rainbow sprinkles are super tiny versions of those Hershey's 'Kissables.' Here's what was inside:

Yep! A psychedelic rainbow cake! Perfect for a Beatles party if you ask me haha. This took forever to make but was so fun and worth it!

A nice big slice of rainbow cake for my wonderful cousin, Felix!

Having his cake...

...and eating it too!

That's it for the food portion of the night, but here are some of the costumes/ random fun shots of people throughout the night! :)

Elliot as Father McKenzie and Vicky as Julia, oceanchild.

Kelsey as 'the girl with kaleidoscope eyes'

Felix's girlfriend Maria as herself + Pippin as one of the 'piggies.'

Felix as himself with Merry as one of the 'piggies.'

Mike as Rocky Raccoon and Miles as Maxwell Edison (you can kind of see his silver hammer in his right hand.) Oh, also Ben making a blurry appearance, perhaps as the 'Nowhere Man.'

Me, getting laced up as 'Her Majesty/The Queen'

Applying Mike's 'Rocky Raccoon' makeup.

Ben as 'Polythene Pam' (She's so good-lookin' but she looks like a man!)

Aww.

Gennie as John Lennon! Her hair, glasses and fake mustachio were just perfect for this!

Joey as Jimmy Shaw from Metric. (Apparently they have a song about the Beatles so that makes this costume appropriate haha.)

Kelsey and Elliot posing in the kitchen haha.

Ben dancing to Beatles Rockband. I think he enjoyed wearing that dress. He seemed very confident with his body while wearing it haha.

India playing Rockband. Please note the 'celophane flowers of yellow and green, towering over [our] heads.'

Angela as someone who is 'going to a party party, yes, [she's] going to a party party!' haha and Justine as Annie from "I am Sam"

Group shots of less than half the guests at the party. I'm not sure why we didn't get any of everybody. Ben was standing on my shoulder in the first picture. Also, I made those mustachios on sticks out of black construction paper and some wooden craft stick things I had laying around. There was one of each type of Beatles' mustachios: the Harrison, the Starr, the McCartney, and the Lennon! Looks like Erik has 'the McCartney' and India has 'the Starr' in these pictures!

Thanks for reading! If I don't have pictures of you from the party and you were there, I'm really sorry! I wasn't very good at taking people pictures that night. Feel free to send me some pictures of yourself from the party and I will add them to this post.

New Piano, Cute Guinea Pigs, and Failed Art.

Today Ben bought a brand spankin' new piano for our apartment! Well, actually he's renting it for a year but it's one of those rent-to-own sort of dealios. Anyways, that's pretty exciting! I think we might try offering piano lessons to kids in our area. The guy at the piano store told us he'd put our names on a list of piano teachers that he recommends if we wanted. He also said the cheapest piano lessons he's heard of around here are $15 per half hour lesson so we should charge at least that. Holy moly! Right? That's a lot of money for fun work!

After our trip to the piano store we went to Pet Junction to get some guinea pig food. They sell it in bulk there for really cheap! They also have other types of bulk pet food and doggy treats so I'd recommend checking it out if you have one in your area! There was a nine week old border collie puppy in the store when we went there and I could hardly handle the cuteness! :)

Here's some cuteness for you! My guinea pigs Merry and Pippin.

Pippin is the sleeping one, Merry is the fat one. We got their cage at a rummage sale and I haven't been able to get those weird stains off the glass, I'm not sure what they're from or what to do about them. Also, their ghetto water bottle/log/clothespin contraption is something I'm not really sure how to explain. Basically, the problem is we don't have hooks to hang the water bottle on the side of the cage so my dad tried to rig something up with a hanger. When that didn't work we just stuck it in the log (but it falls through without the duct tape around it) and never bothered taking the hanger off. Then my mom thought she'd figure out a way for their hay to be within reach but not on the ground where they walk all over it so she attached a clothespin to the hanger and clipped their hay into it. Unfortunately the guinea pigs were scared and confused by the clothespin so they refused to eat from it. So there you have it. That's the story of our MacGyver inspired guinea pig cage.

Anyways, as for my creative project for the day, I'm afraid I've been rather unsuccessful. I did make a painting but I am no where near happy with it. Perhaps I will post photos of it tomorrow after making some changes. Otherwise I will make it my goal to create TWO new paintings/ sculptures/recipes/whatever tomorrow! But just to show you guys I really WAS working on something today, I will take a picture of my rough preliminary sketch.

Ok, so actually I've decided to show you my painting thus far because maybe you can offer suggestions I haven't thought of! It's always helpful to get constructive criticism, especially when you feel a bit stuck (which is where I'm at right now.) I want to retouch it a bit and add some more detail I think, but then I wonder if it will be worth it or if I'm going to end up hating this painting in the end anyways. Here you go! Rip it apart please. I need some guidance.

Also, there isn't a random dark area in the background on the left side, that was just a shadow from me taking the picture. Have a nice night world! I think I'm going to get to bed. I've got a busy day ahead of me tomorrow! :)