Creative Oscars Party Ideas + Film Reel Cupcakes

I am a member of the World Market Trendsetter Tribe.  This Oscars Party is brought to you by World Market as part of their Movie Lovers Sweepstakes. As always, all opinions are 100% my own.  #MovieLoversSweeps

Don't you just love watching the Academy Awards?  Whether you watch it to critique the fashion and style on the red carpet, to catch a glimpse of your favorite actor or actress, or to see if your favorite movie wins, there is something for everyone!

I've been busy creating some great ways for you to enjoy the Oscars this year with family and/or friends by throwing an Oscars viewing party!  I'll be sharing tons of fun food, drink, invitation, ballot, and decorating ideas for you party to be amazing and worthy of the red carpet!

To get ready for my Oscar party, I went shopping where I always go to prep for a party- World Market!  World Market so many great dishes and party essentials that are perfect for entertaining, as well as lots of gourmet food and drinks from around the world.  

The first thing you need when prepping for an Oscars viewing party are invitations.  I created these free printable Oscar party invitations for you to download, print, and pass out to your party guests!  

I created them to look like tickets, and in this post I show you how to make a glittery gold envelope to put them in.

Once the invitations are passed out, it's time to go shopping for food and some party dishes!  I wanted this party to look great, but be easy to put together. 

One of my favorite finds at World Market was this retro popcorn maker, which looks amazing, and is just perfect for the Academy Awards since the movies and popcorn go hand in hand.  

World Market also sells some cute paper popcorn boxes that perfectly match the popcorn maker…. gotta' love that! 

I wanted to serve cupcakes to match the theme, so I decided to go with some gold film reel cupcakes made from licorice wheels.   

The wheels look like film reels, especially when you unroll the end just a bit.  I originally saw the idea here, but I swithced them up a bit.  Here's how I made them: 

Gold Film Reel Cupcakes:

Supplies:

• EDIBLE gold spray paint (from the craft store)
• Store bought or home-made cupcakes
• Licorice wheels (from World Market) 

To give the edible film reels some sparkle and shine, spray them with edible gold paint.  Spray the wheels and top of the cupcakes with the gold paint just like you would with regular spray paint.  You might need a couple coats of paint on the licorice wheels.

Place one "film reel" on the top of each cupcake.  I just love the way they turned out!!

Another fun treat to serve are these tuxedo chocolate covered almonds.  They are so impressive to serve, but I promise they aren't as hard as they look to make!  

Simply start with some World Market chocolate covered almonds, and follow the directions in my tutorial to make the cutest little almonds, all dressed up in a suit and tie.  You're basically just painting on a white triangle for the shirt, a tiny black bow tie, and a couple little dots for buttons with chocolate bark or melts and a toothpick.

I found these small tuxedo boxes that were perfect for holding treats for guests!

While watching the Oscars you have to have a little bubbly, so I picked up some of my favorite orange mango passion fruit Italian soda and mixed it with ginger ale for a delicious drink that looked amazing in the Madison champagne flutes.  These glasses look amazing, and would you believe that they only cost $1.99 each?  You can bet that I stocked up!

To decorate make my food table, I spray painted some regular tickets from the party store (originally green) a pretty gold color, and attached them to the front of my cake plate and serving platters with tape.  I also used some metallic gold shreds on a platter to hold the drinks.  Both of these decorations added a lot to the table without taking a lot of time and effort or costing a lot of money.

When your guests arrive for your Oscar party, you can have them fill out this free printable 2014 Oscar ballot and make their picks for the top categories of the Oscars.  

They can do it for fun, or you can always have a prize for the winner at the end of the Academy Awards!  A fun prize would be an assortment of some of World Market's delicious and unique chocolate bars.  Their strawberry and champagne and sea salt dark chocolate bars are soooo good!  The blood orange milk chocolate bar is next on my list to try.

Are you a movie lover too?  World Market is giving away FREE movies for a year ($1600 Fandango gift card), plus a $1,000 World Market gift card!  Be sure to enter World Market's Movie Lovers Sweepstakes for a chance to win the grand prize package.  There are also three awesome runner up prizes which include a $500 Fandango gift card and a $500 World Market gift card!  

You can earn bonus entries for liking World Market's Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and Tumblr brand pages for more chances to win.  Good luck!

If you liked this project, please follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Bloglovin', and Instagram.

xo, Laura

Sharing here:  Show and Tell

2014 Printable Oscar Ballot

It's Oscars Week here on Make Life Lovely, and today I'm sharing a 2014 Printable Oscar Ballot that you can use to play along during the Academy Awards and see how close you were to picking the winners!

You can play along and vote for your favorites just for fun, or you could have a prize at the end for the big winner.

If you're throwing a party or get together you don't want to miss the free printable Oscars invitations that I shared with you yesterday, plus the directions on how to make a gorgeous sparkly gold glitter envelope to put it in!

Click here to download the 2014 Printable Oscar Ballot

(2 per page)

Enjoy!  If you missed any of the Oscars fun this week, here are some of the highlights!

I teamed up with World Market to create a fun Oscars Viewing Party!  

One of my favorite ideas are these gold film reel cupcakes that are so quick and easy to put together.  When you use store-bought cupcakes, you can have these guys ready in only 5 minutes!

Chocolate covered almonds look and taste even better when they're all dressed up for the party in tiny chocolate tuxedos!  These little guys are so addicting…

If you liked this project, please follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Bloglovin', and Instagram.

xo, Laura

Sharing here:  Show and Tell

Free Printable Snake Valentines

I've been on a roll with the free printable Valentines these last few weeks, haven't I?  This is my last one before Valentine's Day, I promise.   I've decided that I really really like designing!

Doesn't it seem like there are more Valentine's for girls out there than there are for boys?  As a mom of two boys and two girls, it seems easier to find cute girl valentines than boy valentines.  Well, hopefully today I can help you moms of boys out!

These free printable valentines are easy- just click on the link to download, print (there's 4 per page), cut, and add a small toy snake to each one.  I found some colored snakes at the dollar store for 8 or 10 (can't remember) snakes for only $1, so these are very affordable, plus each child will get a small toy that they will love to play with, rather than candy that will be eaten in 5 seconds.  Perfect for the schools who don't want your kids bringing candy to school, like mine!

Just click on the link below to download!

Free Printable Snake Valentines

Enjoy!  For more free printable valentines fun, just click on the links below!

Free printable pirate valentines

Free printable airplane valentines

If you liked this project, please follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Bloglovin', and Instagram.

xo, Laura

Game Day Hot Dog Wrappers + Heinz Happiness

This post brought to you by Heinz Ketchup. All opinions are 100% mine.

So how many of you watched the Super Bowl?  Well, let me rephrase the question.  How many of you watched the Super Bowl commercials, which is actually the main reason I watch the Super Bowl (that and the delicious food)?  Did you Watch the Heinz Super Bowl spot?  I thought the commercial was pretty cute, and can totally relate to tapping the bottom of my Heinz ketchup bottle!  If you didn't get a chance to see the commercial, or want to watch it again, be sure to check it out below…

.

Heinz is the only ketchup we use in our house, because it tastes the best!  For me, Heinz equals happiness, because my french fries are always so lonely without their Heinz ketchup.  What would a hamburger be without a bit of Heinz Ketchup on top?

During Sunday's game I served up some hot dogs, and wrapped them up in some cute hot dog wrappers that I created that are perfect for the Super Bowl, or any other sporting event!  They actually started out as bottle wraps, but fit just perfectly around the hot dogs too.  You can download them HERE for free!  Just print, cut, and tape around your hot dogs to dress them up a bit.



Right now Heinz Ketchup is running a Show Us Your Heinz promotion where you can submit a photo of you and your family showing your love of Heinz.  Be sure to enter, because you definitely want to get in on the more than $400,000 in prizes!!

So what's your favorite way to eat Heinz?

xo, Laura

Free Super Bowl Printables + Cupcake Bar Ideas

This shop is part of a social shopper marketing insight campaign with Pollinate Media Group™ and Rubbermaid and Sharpie but all my opinions are my own. #pmedia #RubbermaidSharpie http://cmp.ly/3/8vNxcO

So who is ready for the Super Bowl?  I have to admit that while I love football, I'm not sure which team  I want to win this year.  But of course I'll still watch the game and the fun commercials!  And we can't forget about the best part of the Super Bowl- the food!  I created an entire set of printables for the big game that I think you'll love, plus I'll show you how easy it is to serve up some yummy treats without a lot of time in the kitchen… you wouldn't want to miss those commercials now, would you? ;)

I thought it would be fun to serve up some cupcakes for my Super Bowl party, and to let everyone garnish their own cupcakes with their favorite toppings at a cupcake bar!

What I like about this party is that it is SO easy to prep ahead of time so that you won't be stuck in the kitchen and missing out on all the action during the game.

I headed to Target and picked up some small Rubbermaid containers to hold all my toppings, and bought some Sharpie markers for the decorations that I'll be sharing.  I also picked up some of my favorite candies and cookies for the cupcakes, as well as some tasty vanilla bean and chocolate cupcakes.

All I had to do to prep my cupcake bar ahead of time was to break up my chocolate chip cookies, Oreos, and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.  I poured these toppings, as well as some gummy bears, Reese's Pieces, and gourmet jelly beans all inside their own little Rubbermaid container with a lid.  Then I used some Darice chalkboard labels, wrote each topping name onto a label with chalk, and stuck it onto the front of each container.  Easy, right?

So when it's game time, all I have to do is pull out my Rubbermaid containers and my store-bought cupcakes (of course you could make your own, too), and we'll have instant treats that guests and family members can customize the way that they want!  To make my store-bought cupcakes look better, I put them inside these cute paper cupcake wrappers and on these cupcake stands from Wholeport.

To make my cupcake bar REALLY cool, I created some fun free Super Bowl printables, which include cupcake toppers (can be used as straw flags as well),

bottle wraps for soda or water,

mini bunting flags, and large bunting flags.  These printables are awesome because you can use them for the Super Bowl, a kids' sporting event or party, or any big game for any sport!  They're very versatile.

I wanted the printables to look like a referee shirt with black and white stripes, so I kept them all black and white (which also makes it a lot cheaper to have printed- you don't have to pay for color copies).

PLUS, I came up with a fun way for my guests to customize their cupcakes and drinks to show which team they're rooting for!

Friends and family can pick from Seahawks and Broncos Sharpie colors, and color in the letters and decorate their cupcake toppers and drink labels with their favorite team colors!  I love that it's a fun way to show your team spirit.

You can also hang a mini bunting up on a cake, or on the food table.  I also created a large bunting as well, that would look great greeting family and friends as they arrive for the game.  You can leave these  black and white like I created them, or you can let everyone know which team you are rooting for by coloring in your team colors with Sharpies!

To download my free printables, just click on the links below!  Keep in mind these are only for personal use, and may not be sold.

Free Printable Super Bowl Cupcake and Straw Flags

Free Printable Super Bowl Bottle Wraps

Free Printable Super Bowl Mini Bunting Flags

Free Printable Super Bowl Banner Flags

For a limited time, you can text COUPONS to TARGET (just type TARGET into the phone number section on your cell phone, and COUPONS into the message section) and grab a coupon for $1 off Rubbermaid Food Storage coupon and a $1 off Sharpie 4-pack or larger.  This deal runs from January 25th- February 8th, so be sure to take advantage of the deal before it's gone!

So which team do you want to win the Super Bowl?  What are you most excited about- the game, the commercials, or the food?

If you liked this project, please follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Bloglovin', and Instagram.

xo, Laura

Free Printable DIY Toy Plane Valentines

Let's face it.  Most valentines that your kids bring home from school are pretty…. well, boring.  I am trying to add a little originality to my kids' Valentine's Day cards this year, so I decided to make some myself!

I spotted some cute little plane toys at the 99 Cent Store that were PERFECT for making some free printable valentines for you (and me) to print, add a toy plane, and pass out to friends!

Your kids will be the coolest, you won't be giving out more candy (just what kids need these days, right?), and they will be original valentines that no one else in the class will be passing out.  It's a win win!  Oh, and the package of toy planes only cost $1 for five planes, so 20 cents per valentine is totally reasonable.  $5 for a class set for my kindergartner.

Here's the easy directions!

You'll Need:

• Free printable airplane valentines
• Toy planes (5 for $1 at the 99 Cent Store)
• Glue gun (or glue dots)
• Scissor of paper cutter

1.  Print and cut the free printable plane valentines.

2.  Use a small dot of hot glue on each wheels and under the front of the plane to attach the airplanes to each card.  Have your child sign his name on each one, and they're ready to go!!

I printed out two versions of the cards for you to choose from.  One that has the word "From" on it in the bottom right corner, and one that doesn't say "From" on it, the bottom is just blank.  There are four different sayings on each of the four cards that you can print.

Now I just have to hide these valentines so my kids don't start playing with the planes before they can pass them out!  Oh, and if you're worried about using hot glue to stick the planes on, don't worry!  If you use just a small dot of glue in each spot, the plane comes off if you pull it just a little bit.  The glue will definitely hold it in place for your kids to pass them out.

Here's another one of my favorites- free printable pirate valentines!  Just add a couple chocolate coins (dollar store carries these too!) for a unique and adorable boy valentine!

Here's a great Valentine's Day idea for the husband… an easy way to open up store-bought fortune cookies, remove the old boring fortune, and add your own own fun steamy fortunes (or use the free printable fortunes I include in the post)!!  Unique, easy, and oh so fun!

And while you're getting your craft on, these easy heart pillows will make your house look lovely!

Enjoy!

If you liked this project, please follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Bloglovin', and Instagram.

xo, Laura