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Our Pinterest Inspired New Years Eve Party!

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I wasn’t sure whether to post about our New Year’s Eve or not. The only thing that was holding me back was the quality of my photos – they were all taken after dark on New Years Eve and I was having too much fun to worry about camera settings! But despite the blur they tell the story of the evening we had and I wanted to share them because there were some Pinspired (inspired by Pinterest) foods and party games! I want to prove that Pinterest can be a force for good and not just a distraction!

Our Pinterest Inspired New Year's Eve at Jennifer Grace Creates

First of all, here’s how to distract two children while you are getting things ready for a New Year’s Eve party – give them a pile of scrapbook paper scraps and some punches and ask them to make confetti! Cheeky Boy couldn’t do the punches too well but he loves cutting with scissors so he just snipped lots of paper into little triangles. Little Miss was amused for a long time with punching!

Our Pinspired New Year's Eve at Jennifer Grace Creates

Our party started at 6pm when people came round for a buffet dinner. It was a very small party of friends – us, another family of four, and a couple, so there were ten of us in total. We had a spread of food for at least double that amount of people:

Our Pinspired New Year's Eve at Jennifer Grace Creates

The ‘Pinspired’ piece of the main buffet was some Cheese & Garlic Pull-Apart Bread. My photo does not do it justice at all, so please head to the original link to make your mouth water here: Cheese and Garlic Crack Bread at Recipe Tin Eats. My loaf was a tiger baton, and I added some cheddar cheese as well as mozzarella, other than that I stuck to the recipe. It took a lot longer to prepare than I thought it would – the recipe said 10 mins of prep but it took me about 20 minutes. It didn’t look like much:

Our Pinspired New Year's Eve at Jennifer Grace Creates

But oh-my-goodness this was yummy! I will be cooking it again for sure. We were ripping off big chunks and coming back for more. Totally worth the effort!

After our main part of the buffet we played some party games before dessert.

This first one is not directly inspired by Pinterest. When searching for party games I discovered some Minute-To-Win-It party games on Pinterest (like this link HERE at The Chaos And The Clutter), which I thought sounded fun. But I realised the two young boys wouldn’t really be able to understand or do most of them (they are only 2 and 3), so I thought about what games we usually have at their parties – pass-the-parcel is always a winner.

I adapted pass-the-parcel a bit so it was fun for all of us to open. Every-other layer had a small pack of Haribo sweets with a cracker-joke. The in-between layers had silly toys that could be fun for grown-ups or kids – whoopee cushions, noisy clackers, foam darts etc. The middle prize was a glow stick.

Our Pinspired New Year's Eve at Jennifer Grace Creates

By far the most successful prize was the whoopee cushions, they were making the kids laugh so much that the grown-ups were laughing at the kids laughing, if you know what I mean! It was also a good game because it meant we were all sitting down for a while to let our dinner go down! P.S. Well done hubby for wrapping up the pass-the-parcel (using our discarded xmas wrapping paper) while I was cooking! We’ll remember the Minute-To-Win-It games for when the boys are a bit bigger.

The next game was straight from Pinterest. They are Mini-Marshmallow Poppers at Real Simple. You basically cut the bottom off a paper or plastic cup, cut the top off a deflated balloon and add the knotted end of the balloon to the base of the cup. Then put a mini-marshmallow in the cup, pull the knot back, and ping the marshmallow into the air. I ended up taping the ballons to the cups too as the kids kept pulling them off.

We were trying to aim the marshmallows into a big bowl in the middle of the room. The idea was if you got the marshmallow into the bowl you could eat it, if you missed then you couldn’t.

Our Pinspired New Year's Eve at Jennifer Grace Creates

The kids played for a while and then we gave them some marshmallows each in a little bowl for them to eat, and the grown-ups had a go, but instead of aiming for a big bowl we went straight to the main target and aimed for each other’s mouths. Hilarity ensued! We were finding mini marshmallows everywhere – I found 2 more at the back of the bookcase yesterday. Worth it for the giggles though!

Next we moved onto desserts. I’ve had these chocolate-dipped cherries pinned for ages, but the original pin didn’t have the link to the recipe, I’ve just found it here: Cherries Dipped In White Chocolate at Simple Provisions. I used gold sugar pearls and snowflake sprinkles, as that’s what I had in the cupboard:

Our Pinspired New Year's Eve at Jennifer Grace Creates

Now, I’m not sure what went wrong, but the cherries with gold pearls were a FAIL. The chocolate didn’t soften up the pearls like icing would, so they were as hard as little tiny rocks. Not pleasant to try and eat! I’m guessing either the pearls were too big (they look a lot bigger than the silver pearls used at Simple Provisions) or they just weren’t the right kind. Also I think my cherries were still a little damp when I dipped them, as some of the white chocolate was sliding off. I want to try these again with just white chocolate, no decoration!

Another dessert was another thing not directly inspired by Pintertest. While searching for New Year’s Eve party activities I saw a lot of photo-booth ideas, including these: New Year’s Eve Photo Booth Props at The Crafted Sparrow, which were made on the Cricut Explore. I thought about powering up the Explore to make some, then I remembered these Vinterkul Pastry Cutters at Ikea which I bought recently, but hadn’t used yet.

The morning before the party I made a basic biscuit recipe (with some lemon zest added to the dough for a bit of zing), and Cheeky Boy, Little Miss, and I had fun cutting, baking, and decorating:

Our Pinspired New Year's Eve at Jennifer Grace Creates

The bows were a big hit with the girls:

Our Pinspired New Year's Eve at Jennifer Grace Creates

While the boys favoured stars and moustaches:

Our Pinspired New Year's Eve at Jennifer Grace Creates

They were fun and tasty too! I need to make more moustaches next time, as the grown ups wanted them too!

After dessert the kids went upstairs to play in their rooms and the grown-ups played a board game (the Logo Game which was harder than I thought it would be). Then at 11pm when the kids were flagging (and I was too, I had a migraine emerging by this point), we did a fake countdown. Hubby found a video of last years’s Big Ben countdown and fireworks and we played it on the tv so the kids thought it was really midnight, and then ran around shouting ‘Happy New Year’ about 50 times over! We had party poppers and threw the confetti the kids had made.

Unfortunately I didn’t take any photos of that because my head was hurting too much to think about it! After the countdown everyone went home and I went to bed, poor hubby had to ring in the Real New Year on his own, I was fast asleep!

It was a really fun evening until my headache though. I shall certainly be searching Pinterest again for our next party! One thing I had pinned but never got round to doing was a New Year’s Eve Bingo at Thirty Handmade Days (there are some more NYE printables on that post too), so I’ll be keeping that in mind for next year!

Do you celebrate New Year’s Eve? Do you use Pinterest for inspiration when you have a party / gathering coming up? Let me know your Pinterest username if so!

Have a great day,

Jennifer x

The post Our Pinterest Inspired New Years Eve Party! appeared first on Jennifer Grace Creates.


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