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

Downton Abbey Tea Party + Free Printable Downton Abbey Trivia Quiz

I am SO beyond excited to share today's post with you today!  It combines three of my most favorite things all in one- a good party, Downton Abbey, and World Market!

Now if you follow me on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, you probably saw some photos from the Downton Abbey Tea Party that I posted on Sunday (and if you don't follow me, I'd love for you to join in the fun!).  I wanted my tea party to be as authentic as possible, and my guests were amazing to dress up and add to the feeling that they were really having a full English tea.

I bought most of the dishes, serving trays, silverware, and food from World Market.  They have an amazing selection of gourmet food from around the world, and I was able to find lots of British and European food that was perfect for the party!  This made it very easy to put together, because I didn't have to spend much time in the kitchen preparing food, and could use that time on decorating and making the FREE printable Downton Abbey trivia quiz that I'll be sharing with you in this post!  Plus, I'll also share a DIY Lady Mary Inspired Tiara/Headband that I made and wore for the party.  I love the way it turned out!

Food & Dishes:  

The food for this tea party was so easy!  I wanted the food to be more substantial than just sweets, so I tried to create an English "full tea," or "high tea," complete with three courses.  The first course consisted of the savory foods, like egg salad sandwiches, cheese and crackers, and dried fruit.  Here's a little tip I learned- when using a three-tiered serving tray at tea, the bottom layer is always eaten first, so it typically holds the sandwiches and other savories.  My tea party guests all ate off of the limited edition Downton Abbey dessert plates from World Market that are just beautiful, and match the other dishes and tea pot that are in the set.

The stands I used are the ivory ones founds here, the white porcelain cake stand, and the beautiful stand shown above.

The second tier, which was the second course, held lemon poppy seed and blueberry scones that I made from World Market's delicious scone mixes.  One can't eat scones plain, you know, so I had some English clotted cream, lemon curd, and orange cranberry marmalade that I served with them.  The scones were amazing on their own, but when you add any of the spreads I just mentioned, they are just heavenly! Lemon curd will always be found in my fridge from here on out, it is THAT good!

For the third course came the sweets, and I did not hold back!  I served Walker's Shortbread from World Market, which everyone loved.  I also served lemon lavender meringues, mini phylo tarts with whipped cream and cut strawberries and kiwi on top, and an assortment of European chocolate covered cookies, all from World Market.  It was nice to serve such a good variety of food, and everyone seemed to really enjoy it.

I also found a small jewelry holder at a craft store that I thought would be perfect for serving Jordan almonds on.  I love how tiny it is!

It wouldn't be a proper tea party without the tea, so because this was a Downton Abbey Tea Party, I just had to have the limited edition The Republic of Tea tin from World Market with the Dowager Countess herself on the front. For those who don't drink caffeine, I also had a Republic of Tea herbal peppermint chocolate tea that was delicious.  The tea was served in the limited edition tea pot, and then poured into beautiful Downton Abbey teacups.

My sister-in-law Rachel loved to "do the Downton," with her pinkie up, of course!  On a side note, look at her beautiful ring!  It's an antique silhouette ring, and was replaced later that night with an engagement ring, woo hoo!  Congratulations Rachel!!

DECORATIONS:

I lucked out, because my husband's grandparents have THE perfect house for throwing a Downton Abbey tea party!  The way their large home is decorated makes it look like it is from a whole different era, which is exactly what I was going for, so I didn't have to do much to the dining room or the formal living room.  I used a white tablecloth with white flowers on the large dining room table, and bought some pretty white and peach roses for the table.  Every English tea party needs fresh roses, right?

I thought it would be fun to have some Crawley family portraits on the table, so I printed out a photo of Lady Mary and Matthew on their wedding day, and a photo of Lord Grantham and Lady Cora as well. I found the perfect frames at World Market to put them in, and they looked great on the table with the china and dishes.  I also found this amazing key bottle opener at World Market a few months ago that I fell in love with.  I think it looks like the perfect front door key to the large Downton estate, don't you?

I also made pretty little place cards for each guest with the word "Lady" before their real name.  I could definitely get used to being called "Lady Laura" ;)  It has a nice ring to it, don't you think?

I found some pretty silver candlestick holders and taper candles at, you guessed it, World Market!  They added a nice ambiance to the table.

Each of the ladies got to take home a cute little favor- a small bag of Jordan almonds.  I bought these adorable little bags from Wholeport.  I love the lace and the tiny key detail on them!

ACTIVITY:

How well do you know Downton Abbey?  I wanted to have some kind of activity for my guests to do, so I created a Downton Abbey Trivia Quiz based on seasons 1, 2, and 3 of the show.  I came up with many of the questions, and also found some here that I used as well.  I found a wonderful vintage flourish design that I included at the top and bottom of the quiz that I just love.

If you'd like to test your knowledge of the show, or if you plan on having a Downton Abbey premier viewing party, you can go ahead and download and print my FREE Downton Abbey Trivia Quiz HERE.  It prints two quizzes per page.  I'll include the answers at the very end of this post, and I'll make them extra small so you arent' tempted to peek ;)  Enjoy!!

I didn't think the quiz was too hard, but my sister-in-law has watched every episode of each season, and thought that the quiz was pretty tricky, so if you check out the quiz, leave me a comment and let me know what you think!  Was I too tough?

Fashion:

All of us dressed in lace, pearls, ruffles, curls... anything girly and dainty!  This was their attempt at being serious, haha.

Can you believe all of these lovely ladies are my sister-in-laws?  Minus my grandma-in-law in the back :)  They all were great sports and looked amazing.

I made a DIY hair tiara/headband that I based on Lady Mary's wedding tiara that had small beautiful leaves that I love.  You can find the easy DIY here.

And now for the sweepstakes!  World Market has partnered with Downton Abbey and is giving away an AMAZING trip for 2 to London, England, a private tour of Highclere Castle, a visit to the set of Downton Abbey, and a $1,000 World Market gift card!  Three first prize winners will also receive a $500 World Market gift card.  Amazing contest, right?!  Can you imagine being the winner of this one?  It would be life changing!  Be sure to enter HERE, and hurry, because the sweepstakes ends 12/27/13.  Good luck!!

Here are the answers to the quiz... how many did you get right?

1. Isis  2. Spanish Flu  3. Shirley Maclaine  4. Anna  5. The Canadian Railway  6. Mr. Bates  7. The Cheerful Charlies  8. Breast Cancer  9. Vera Bates  10. Gretna Green (Scotland)  11. Patrick  12. Sir Anthony Strallan  13. Lawyer  14. Her eyesight is failing  15. Harem Pants  16. Edna Braithwaite  17. William Mason  18. Violet  19. Matthew's fiance  20. Puts a bar of soap on the ground outside the bathtub for Cora to slip on

xo, Laura

Do you love Downton Abbey? Then Read On!

I am a HUGE fan of Downton Abbey.  I love the characters, the detailed plot lines, and the twists and turn that are in every single episode.  This PBS series is absolutely amazing, and has won many awards.  If you haven't seen it yet, you have to watch all three seasons and catch up before season 4 starts in January!

For all of you Downton Abbey fans (or soon to be fans), I have some great news!  Three pieces of great news, actually.

First, World Market has partnered with Downton Abbey, and is giving away a dream trip for two to London, England (hotel & accommodations), a private tour of Highclere Castle, a visit to the set of Downton Abbey, and a $1,000 World Market gift card!!  How amazing is that?!  Plus, three first prizes of a $500 World Market gift card.  You can see more details and read the official rules here.

Second, I would LOVE for you to join World Market and I in hosting a Virtual "Do the Downton" Tea Party on Sunday, December 8th.  We are asking fans to participate in the event by posting photos of themselves doing the Downton and using the hashtag #dothedownton to win prizes!  You can read more about it here.  I have a fun tea party that I'm planning, and will be playing along and posting photos of myself and others at my party, so be sure to follow me on FB, Twitter, and Instagram to see the photos!  I'd love for you to join us and play along!  I'll take any excuse to dress up and talk Downton Abbey any day ;)

And last, but not least, World Market is now selling Downton Abbey products that are exclusive to World Market!  I've already shopped there twice this week, and have bought some of the amazing products!  You can see some of them pictured above.  The Downton Abbey inspired items include: 

• Walkers/Downton Abbey Shortbread tin
• Walkers/Downton Abbey Mincemeat Tarts
• Walkers/Downton Abbey Plum Pudding
• Republic of Tea/Downton Abbey Tea
• Downton Abbey Tea Cups
• Downton Abbey Tea Pot
• Downton Abbey Wrapping Paper
• Downton Abbey Crackers
• Downton Abbey Wine
• Downton Abbey Dessert Plates

Exciting, right?  I have already bought some of these products, including the tea pot, and they are so nice and are very high quality.  I can't wait to buy even more for my tea party!  

So to recap, be sure to enter the contest, be ready on December 8th to post photos of you doing the Downton and use the hashtag #dotheDownton, and check out the great selection of Downton Abbey items at World Market!

And if you've never seen Downton Abbey, you really have to watch the show!  You can buy episodes on iTunes, YouTube, in stores, or you can even borrow it from a friend who is a fan.  I'm sure they'd be thrilled to share their love of this amazing show!

xo, Laura

Italian Antipasto Salad, Basil Pesto Dipping Sauce, and Italian Cream Sodas

I am a member of the World Market Trendsetter Tribe.  These Italian recipes are sponsored by World Market as part of their Gourmet Getaway Sweepstakes.

Get ready to be hungry!  I've got not one, but three amazing Italian recipes to share with you today!!  I love sitting down together with my family to enjoy a homemade dinner together.  It's an important part of my family's day where we can relax and enjoy one another's company.

Last week I made a trip to World Market (okay, a few trips to World Market) to pick up some gourmet Italian ingredients from their gourmet food and drink section to make my family an Italian dinner- a delicious antipasto salad, some rosemary bread with a basil pesto dipping sauce, and then some Italian cream sodas for dessert... yum!  Here's what I bought for the salad...

La Terrazze Extra Virgin Olive Oil // Domaine de Vignes Aged Red Wine Vinegar // Columbus Italian Dry Salame // Cucina & Amore Grilled Artichoke Hearts // World Market Italian Seasoning 

I also bought a few things from the grocery store: romaine hearts, provolone cheese, black olives, grape tomatoes, garlic cloves, and some fresh basil.  Here are the easy directions to make this delicious salad!

Italian Antipasto Salad

Ingredients:

For the Salad:

• 3 Romaine lettuce hearts, chopped or torn into bite-sized pieces
• 4 oz. Columbus Italian Dry Salame, cut into thin slices
• 4 oz. provolone cheese, cut into thin slices
• 1 can black olives, sliced
• 1 can Cucina & Amore Grilled Artichoke Hearts, sliced
• 1 package grape tomatoes
• Fresh basil, cut into thin strips, to taste

For the Dressing:

• 1/4 cup Terrazze Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• 1/2 cup Domaine de Vignes Aged Red Wine Vinegar
• Splash of balsamic vinegar
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 tsp. World Market Italian Seasoning

Combine all of the salad ingredients in a large bowl.  I used my Coupe Serving Bowl I fell in love with at World Market and had to have.  Combine all of the dressing ingredients in a small bowl.  Pour salad dressing on the salad, and mix well.  Refrigerate until ready to serve, to allow the flavors to combine.

This salad was great!  Although this salad is meant to be an appetizer, you can always serve it as a main dish if you add more salame and cheese, and serve it with other Italian favorites!  We ate our salad off of the white Coupe Salad Plates, which I love because they are simple and classic, and would look great with any food served on them!

I served this salad to my family with some store-bought rosemary bread, and a quick basil pesto dipping sauce I made- this sauce literally took me less than a minute to make!

All I did was combine some Sacla Italia Pesto Alla Genovese Basil Pesto with some La Terrazze Olive Oil to make the dipping sauce- so easy, and yet so delicious!!  I served the sauce on a white Coupe Salad Plate.  My kids and husband and I loved dipping our bread in this amazing sauce!

Now onto my favorite part- the drinks!  Who doesn't love buying a fruity and creamy Italian Creme Soda?  My family LOVES them, but it can get expensive buying one for all six of us in my family.  Did you know that it's so easy to make your own at home?  You can customize this recipe to suit your own taste, and the flavor possibilities are endless! Plus, you'll save yourself a ton of money making these at home instead of buying them, which is always a bonus!

World Market has a GREAT selection of Torani syrups that you'll use in this recipe.  I picked up four bottles for our Italian creme sodas because it's fun to mix and match and combine flavors to make your own custom drink.  Have fun and get creative!

Italian Creme Sodas

For each soda you will need:

• 1 cup club soda
• 4 Tbsp. Torani syrup (any flavor that you would like)
• 1 Tbsp. half and half
• Ice
• Whip cream 
• Soiree Maraschino Cherries

1.  Fill cup with ice.  Add 4 Tbsp. Torani syrup to the ice, and fill glass with club soda.  Stir.

2.  Slowly pour in the half and half.  This is the best part!  When the half and half combines with the ice and cold soda it makes beautiful creamy swirls that look amazing!  If you are careful and don't move the cup around too much, you can keep the swirls in place when serving these drinks to guests.  Add whip cream and a cherry to the top and serve!

Another great thing about this drink is that it's low calorie!  Club soda has zero calories and you can buy Torani Sugar Free syrup with zero calories- the only calories will come from the half and half (you can buy this fat free, too), and the whip cream and cherry (which you could leave off if you like).  Not too bad for an amazing drink!!

Did you know that right now World Market is giving away an amazing prize in their Gourmet Getaway Sweepstakes?  You can enter to win a 6 day culinary trip for 2 to Venice, Italy!  Trip includes airfare and accommodations, Cicchetti tour, a hands-on Venetian cooking class, a cheese making demonstration and tasting, and a $1,000 World Market gift card- WOW!  Plus, three first prize winners will receive $500 World Market gift cards.  You can also earn bonus entries for liking World Market on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and Tumblr for more chances to win!  Check out the video below with Joey Fatone!

World Market has partnered with the Live Well Network and their hit show My Family Recipe Rocks, hosted by Joey Fatone.  My Family Recipe Rocks features amazing hometown cooks across America, and and Joey Fatone and his crew cook up old family recipes, new homegrown dishes, and meeting people behind their great food in their own kitchens.

You can tune in to My Family Recipe Rocks on Sundays at 8:30 p / 7:30 c.  You can check local listings at livewellnetwork.com.

Be sure to enter World Market's Gourmet Getaway Sweepstakes!  How great would that be to win a culinary trip to Italy and a $1,000 World Market gift card?  You can't win if you don't enter!

I hope you give these gourmet Italian recipes a try, and be sure to check out World Market's great gourmet food section, as well as the rest of the store.... I promise you won't leave empty-handed!

For more fall fun, you can print off my fall activities bucket list punch card.

And for a fun family Halloween meal, check out this Spooky Spaghetti with Eyeballs!

To decorate your home this fall, you can see how to make this cinnamon-scented nature wreath,

or this fall wreath made out of paper!

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

xo, Laura

Linking up here: Whipperberry, Tidy Mom, 30 Handmade Days, Tatertots and Jello, Ginger Snap Crafts, Snap!