tasty time.

Haven't posted a new recipe for awhile, here are a couple that I have tried recently that were super good and easy.

Chicken Pasta Salad

(This one Becca made for Sakerra's Wedding)



1 bag cooked bow tie pasta
2-3 cups cooked chicken, shredded or cubed
1 cup mayo
1 cup Miracle Whip or mayo
1/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup sweet pickle juice
Chopped Celery
Craisins
Grapes or Apples
Unsalted Cashews

Mix together the mayo, salad dressing, sugar and pickle juice. Toss with the pasta and add remaining ingredients.

Flatbread Cheeseburgers

(adapted from Life as a Lofthouse)

1 pound lean ground beef
1/2 cup water
1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 pkg dry onion soup
1/2 cup ketchup
1 Tbsp mustard
1 clove garlic, minced (1 tsp preminced garlic)
1 (11 ounce) can refrigerated pizza dough
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Romaine lettuce, chopped


Brown ground beef in a large skillet. Add water, vinegar, onion soup mix, ketchup, mustard and garlic. Stir to combine then simmer over low heat until warmed through and thickened.

Heat another large skillet over medium heat. Divide the pizza dough into 8 parts. Roll each piece as round as possible..

Place one piece of dough onto the warm skillet. Cook on each side for 45  seconds or until puffed and golden. Place each flatbread onto a cookie sheet in a 200 degree warm oven, to keep warm until all flatbreads are made.

Take one flatbread and fill with meat mix, shredded cheese, and lettuce.  Fold in half like a taco.

 

Hunger Games: Activities

For the Hunger Games movie premier party we had various activities that could appeal to a wide range of people and ages.    There was no pressure, people could just participate as they pleased.  May this also be a lesson of Pinterest party planning pros and cons!

I found all of my ideas for this party on pinterest.  Some ideas did not work well at all.

Bows and Arrows: On pinterest there was a link to making little bows and arrows out of fishing line, popsicle sticks, and q-tips.  I soaked my popsicle sticks for hours and hours...still no bending without breaking.  So I wandered the Dollar store looking for anything else an hour before the party we could do.  Found some glow-stick bracelets and with a little bit of hot-glue they made perfect bows!  You just bend the glowstick in a large C shape. Wrap fishing line around one end, securing with hotglue, and then string down to other end.  We wrapped a couple of times.  Then use the q-tips to shoot as arrows.  They actually went pretty far and were quite entertaining.

Capital Couture Nails and Makeup:  We had a bunch of nail polish and brighly colorful/glittery makeup for people to play with.  The Capital is famous for it's outrageous colors and stylings so we had fun trying to look the part.  For the gents we also had a cutout of Senica Crane's beard. We got our nail ideas from Pinterest.

Don't Eat Peeta:  My sister created the board game for this one.  I have posted the rules before in a Don't Eat Peter Pettigrew game we made for Harry Potter. 

Cake Decorating:  I posted about our Peeta Mellark cake decorating contest on the Hunger Games:  Food post.

T-shirt making:  A few of us got together to make Hunger games themed t-shirts with my Silouhette heat-transfer.  The LOVE t-shirt was inspired by a poster found from pinterest. (More info below)

Prize Reaping:  I had various prizes like key-chains, little figurines, and buttons from Hot-topic.  I also had a water-bottle with some survial stuff inside, soundtracks, bags, and movie posters. I wrapped them up in yellow, red, and orange tissue paper to make them look like fire-balls (inspired by these).  I made some bags inspired by painted ones I found here.  I used heat transfer instead.  I downloaded the shopping cart and bread from the Silouhette store.  I made the mocking jay symbol by downloading a picture of it and using the trace tool on the Silouhette Design.  The font is the Hunger Games font from dafont.com.  I created the parachutes for my shirt by welding parts of a parachute man from Silouhette with the bread or a basket.  I also got the "Prep-team" graphics from the silouhette store.

Decorations:  I had seen silver parachute decorations on pinterest but there wasn't any tutorials online so I winged it by covering strofoam bowls with aluminum foil, attatching jute tied around bread (the same bread from Silouhette, cut out of brown cardstock).  I hung them with fishing line.  I printed several of the posters I had found online, and I wrapped the silverware and placed it in a cornucopia as I had seen here. 

Favors:  For party favors I made bookmarks by copying pages of the book and stamping them with this amazing mockingjay stamp I got on Etsy. I bought various magnets, pins from Mud in the Blood on Etsy and Pinbackattack.  I stamped water bottle labels and included fireballs.