Ode to the Dollar Store

Just because it’s a $1 doesn’t make it cheap! Take this glass cylinder vase for just $1 at the Dollar Tree there are so many ways you can use this cylinder vase.  Whether you are filling it with fake flowers from a dollar storeor real flowers from the florist
at least you’re not paying $30 to start, and if you need more than one vase for a long table or around the room you would want to keep your costs down. To pazazz this vase up a little lets add some other Dollar Store Items shall we!

How about some ribbon to tie around it in a bow. Plain ribbon or themed ribbon whatever you want all for a dollar and will add ambiance to any vase.  Vases aren’t just for flowers either, at the dollar store you can buy a bag of pebbles for a dollar fill up the vase half way and then place a candle from the dollar store on top of the pebbles for brighten up a room for an evening event or for your centerpiece!  So many great ideas can come from just wondering the isles of a dollar store!

Candy Cane Centerpieces or Gift Ideas

ImageThank you Martha Stewart once again for your brilliant ideas! I just came across this gem today! This is a great way to wrap a gift, make a place card, make a stocking stuffer, or use them as centerpieces! It is very easy to do and there are a few different ways I think you could do it.  See the instructions below for Martha’s Ideas I’ve also added my own suggestions to make this a year round event treat!

Here are the instructions:

1. Cut a rectangle of striped wrapping paper on the bias, making it large enough to enclose the roll. Wrap roll, secure overlap with double-sided tape, and fold in ends. Or add decorative stripes with quilling paper (available at crafts or stationery stores): Wrap roll first in plain paper, attach quilling strip with doublesided tape, wind tightly around roll in a spiral motion, and tape end.

2. Wrap decorated rolls in cellophane, twist ends, and attach tags with yarn.

Now if you would like to make them larger to put a gift or candy inside as a nice surprise for your guests instead of using a coin roll I would suggest saving up all your toilet paper rolls!  They make a great hollow shell that you can place any candy or presents inside for your guests.  It is a nice take away from your event.  Also instead of using the ribbon and making them look like candy canes you can really truly make them into anything use any wrapping paper you have lying around the house or run to the store or some scrap booking paper would work well too.  Any of these adjustments would make these little treasures perfect for any occasion not just for the winter months!

Reusable Wine Glass Personalized Place Cards

There are a million and a half ways to do a creative place card for a dinner party… The majority of which aren’t to expensive and tend to consist of some kind of paper product and go along with your theme.  But what if you could have reusable place cards that were creative and fun?  I just came across this DIY project that anyone could use for their next party! As long as you don’t mind your wine glasses forever having chalk board or white board paint on the bottoms this is a great project that is not only useful for place cards but for any party so that you never lose your drink!  Now I know what you’re going to say I can wipe off the chalk steel the drink and write my name on it… Sure but who is doing that at a party?  If someone is doing that at your party do you really want them there? Any way a few cheap wine glasses some chalkboard paint and pieces of chalk is all it takes to make this creative do it yourself place card that everyone will be talking about!

Want to achieve this look?  Check out these items below:



Top 5 Party Games

Do you have a party game that you absolutely love to play with friends? If you have a small group sure you can bring out the classic board games, some monopoly or bananagrams but what if you have a large group of people and you want to entertain everyone with games?  Well here are my top five favorite party games!


Pictionary- As long as you have a big surface to do your drawing on this can be a great party game.  You can break up the party into teams have everyone write down some ideas of what people need to draw (if you don’t actually own the box version you can do a make shift one yourself) and presto hours of drawing fun!  Each team draws at the same time and which ever team guesses first wins.  You don’t even need the board game part to play just have a timer and keep score first team to 10, 20, 30 points whatever wins!

Charades- Now Charades can be the exact same game play as pictionary, you don’t need the actual board game to play at all! Just divide the party into teams, preferably of equal size. Give out slips of paper to everyone to write down phrases that may either be quotations or titles of books, movies, plays, television shows, or songs. Make sure that your team can’t get their suggestions.  Pick members from each team to take turns keeping time. Agree on how many rounds to play and presto you again have a totally free game to play with all of your guests! Now it’s time to take turns acting out what’s on the slip if your team gets it you get a point.


Scattergories– My family has been playing Scattergories for as long as I can remember at our annual family reunion and non of us actually own the board game!  Here is how we play: We all break up into teams evenly, then as a group we come up with a collection of categories: things you’d see at school, song titles, move titles, things you can find in a kitchen etc.  We all come up with a couple to add to our different lists because we would like to do a couple of rounds.  Then we have someone in the room think of a letter if you don’t want to leave it up to just one person then write out the alphabet cut it up and select a random letter.  Then set a timer and you’re good to go, the teams all split up and then come back together when they are all ready to reveal what they wrote down.  Any time groups come up with the same answer they don’t get a point, any time a team has a unique answer you get a point, you can however get more than one point if for instance the category is cartoon characters the letter is M and you put down minnie mouse you get a point for each of those M words!

Apples to Apples- This is one of my all time favorite party games!  It is a great way to get to know people and their sense of humor.  For this game unlike the last three someone will have to shell out the cash to get the game.  But it is certainly worth it! The game has both green apple cards and red apple cards. All players take seven red apple cards (all with noun words and descriptions on them) and looks at them.  Each round there is a judge and it rotates clockwise that way everyone takes turns being the judge.  The Judge pick a green apple card (with an adjective word on it) from the stack reads the word aloud and places it face up on the table while everyone else looks through their hands for the most appropriate red card to go with the green one selected for the round.  The judge mixes around all the red cards so they don’t know who put it in, reads them aloud and then selects the word that they think is best described the green apple card.  The winner keeps the green apple card and you move on to the next judge.  You keep playing until someone has earned enough green apple cards to win the game whether you determine a certain time for the game to end, a certain number of green cards one has to accumulate, or a number of times the game must rotate around the circle, I’ve seen it played a million ways!

Click the Image to See MoreCards Against Humanity- This game is played pretty much the exact same way as apples to apples only the it’s is white and black cards and the cards are much, much, much dirtier and less appropriate for all audiences… If you decide to play this one it
is ABSOLUTELY HILARIOUS but also widely inappropriate to play with little ones around! This has been you official warning!  Obviously I love the game or it wouldn’t be on my list of tip five party games but watch out for this one! For this game you can buy it on the companies website for $25 or download it and print it yourself for free.  You decided but it’s a nice option if you have the resources at hand to just print it yourself on some nice sturdy paper.

Theme It Up

Having a central theme to your event or party is the first step to making the process easier.  It gives you a starting point.  Whether you are choosing a color theme for a wedding, a novelty theme for a bar/bat mitzvah, a holiday theme, or you can event surround your event around one single food item (a whole party dedicated to everything chocolate!  Yes Please!).  The theme is the starting point from where you can begin your planning.  After you have picked your theme you can begin your planning process!

What are some theme idea’s you have seen be successful in the past?  Did you once go to that great ’20s themed party where everyone actually came in costume there was themed drinks and decorations that was a huge success?  Was it a child’s birthday party that was sesame street themed? What have you seen be successful in the past?  What are your likes and dislikes.  This is your party isn’t it?  What would you most want to see at your party and how can you accomplish it on your budget?

Obviously if it is around a certain holiday you’re probably making your party around that theme?  But what makes that theme have a signature on an event?  Lets think fall since that’s the season we are in right now.  We can go off of a couple of themes here; Halloween, Harvest, Thanksgiving…  What are you going to go for and how can you make the event flow?

A Halloween theme is great you can have a giant candy bar, there are plenty of halloween decorations in the stores that you can buy, even the dollar store has a great selection!  You can even have themed candy, in front of the candy or on the candy containers change the name!  Instead of Three Musketeers you can have Three Musketerrors, instead of candy corn you can have some crazy corn.   There are great novelty frozen brains ice trays out there that you can use for the center of your punch bowl.  So much can happen with the halloween theme stores are full of great ideas… But what do you do when there isn’t that much out there for your theme?

The more general fall theme yes yes there is still some stuff out there in the stores but you’ve still got to put it all together.  Use what you have around you it’s cheep and easy!  For the centerpiece here to the right we purchased three orange candles at the dollar store, a bag of little rocks and fake leaves at the dollar store and two gourds from the grocery store which were on sale 3 for $2. The wine glasses were already in our collection as was the tray it is placed on, and if I had more time I most likely would have gone out to get the leaves and rocks myself off the ground but I was pressed for time for this party… Moving on in the theme to party drinks of course there must be apple cider and for the adults an apple cider alcoholic beverage .  Our homes alcoholic Apple Cider drink is: apple cider, jack, agnostura bitters, squeeze of a lemon slice, and apple slice.

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