New Year's Eve Party

Happy New Year!!  I thought I would kick 2011 off with sharing pictures from our New Year's Eve Party.  I didn't get nearly as many as I wanted to (which always seems to happen) but hopefully you can walk away with some new ideas.  I went with a silver and gold color scheme because not only did I think that was New Years appropriate but it gave me the opportunity to reuse a lot of our Christmas decorations.

We set the room up in different sections with beer, champagne, wine, water, and punch tubs and containers on our kitchen counter.  You can get an idea of this set-up in the picture below with me and my brother.  I wrapped each ice tub with gold wire ribbon to dress it up and also put silver and gold wrapping paper (left over from Christmas) at the bottom of the serving tray.  Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get a picture of this.

Our kitchen is right next to the front door, so we set-up the dessert table in the middle of room in order to keep the flow of people moving towards the back of our home and keep everyone congregating around the kitchen.  We made chocolate covered pretzels, chocolate coffee cupcakes, peppermint bark and sugar cookies with gold and silver icing and sprinkles.  The chocolate coffee cupcakes were tweaked from a Paula Dean recipe on Food Networks website.  The centerpiece was a vase wrapped in gold ribbon and a gold ornament (no cost whatsoever!) and then gold votive candles were positioned around the ornament centerpiece.  Branches submerged in silver glitter that were on our Christmas tree were positioned underneath a couple plates.

This isn't the best shot of our cocktail bar since there isn't any liquor on it yet but again, we wanted to move people throughout the room and therefore set-up all mixed drinks away from where the other alcohol was.  I wrapped the votive candles with left over wrapping paper and filled a vase with ornaments from our tree.  Finally, I made silver ribbon sleeves for each of the mixers (cranberry juice, diet coke, and club soda) that we put in air-tight jugs.

We put all appetizers on our coffee table in the living room.  We went with the basics...cheese, crackers, artichoke dip, toasted bread, and a veggie plate with olives.  Nothing too fancy but easy to munch on when someone wanted to move away from the crowded food table.

At each of the food stations, I used a design from Piggy Bank Parties on Etsy.  I did a print screen of the purchased design and then used Microsoft Word to create specific labels (I know...graphic designers are cringing to hear how I did this). 

Below is our food table where Nate made Shrimp Crostinis with Avocado Lime Sauce (Nate was still making them when I took this pictured so they are not on the table yet), Chicken Empanadas, Asian Meatballs with Chili-Lime Cream, Tomato/Basil/Mozzarella Pizza, Potato/Bacon/Fontina Pizza with Arugula, and Prosciutto/Red Pepper/Mozzarella Pizza with Oregano.  I kept the silver and gold theme with a Crate & Barrel Merimekko Table Cloth and Bamboo runner.  Then I spray painted beer bottles and wrapped gold and silver ribbon around them with the Piggy Bank Party tags and used them as taper candle holders.  As a side note, I will not use beer bottles to do this next time.  Use a different shaped bottle like Perrier bottles, so it looks more like a vase.  Finally, I wrapped vases with gold wrapping paper and put votive candles wrapped in silver ribbon around the vases.  Then I put gold leaves around the entire table.  I wish I had some close-ups of this but the decor worked weel for a table full of food.

Happy New Year to everyone and I'd love to hear about your holiday parties this past month!