Entertaining for the Masses - You'll Flip Over this Summer Party Menu

Summertime is a great time to celebrate simple fresh food with great friends. Even better is pairing it with a birthday or anniversary celebration and adding a simple, festive decorative element. Here’s a simple menu for entertaining 30 guests with flip flop flair.

Flip Flop Decorations:
Choose flip flops in all colors and sizes at any Dollar Store for $1 per pair. We celebrated a 50th birthday combined with a 40th birthday with 90 sandals attached to our tent. They really stood out because we attached them to the sides of a tent using fishing net. We also hung some behind the food tables and at the entrance. Also sticking with them theme, you can make flip flop sugar cookies and prominently display them on each table. Finish it off with a banner using the simple flip flop design. Even the kids can make it since it’s basically a distorted oval with the plastic strips drawn on. Use bright disposable table cloths and serving items.

Bonus:
- Use permanent markers and write the guest of honor’ name on the back of the flip flops and then send each guest home with a pair.
- At the end of the night, let the guests find pairs of flip flops to take home with them. Especially fun if kids are at the party too.

Summer Picnic Menu:
There’s a great assortment here with something for everyone. And the real beauty is that no one is stuck at the grill because there is plenty of meat between the ham and the smoked turkey breast. The cheddar cheese scones are perfect with the salad and make great little sandwiches with the ham. Several of the items can be made the day before so the party day is a celebration for all. Since the broccoli slaw and the turkey salad both have a dairy based dressing, we chose sides with oil and vinegar based sauces for the other two.

Half Glazed Baked Ham
Smoked Turkey and Strawberry Salad Sensation
Cheddar Cheese Scones
Broccoli Slaw
Green Bean and Tomato Salad
Simply Satisfying Potato Salad
Flip Flop Cookies
2 large Watermelons

Recommended Schedule:
Day Before:
-Make and Chill the Turkey Salad Dressing
-Make and Chill the Broccoli Slaw Dressing
-Make and Decorate Flip Flop Sugar Cookies
-Make and Chill the Potato Salad

Morning of Party:
-Decorate with Flip Flops
-Make the Scones
-Cut up the turkey and strawberries

An Hour Before the Party:
-Make all the salads
-Keep the two dairy based salads chilled
-Cut up the watermelon

20 Minutes Before The Meal:
-Reheat the scones
-Take the ham out of the fridge

Broccoli Slaw Recipe
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 0 minutes
Serves: about 30

Broccoli Slaw Recipe Ingredients
-3 bags broccoli slaw (easiest!) or 3 large bunches of broccoli (chopped using tree top parts)
-1 package pre-cooked bacon, microwaved for 30 seconds and crumbled
-1 ½ cups sunflower seeds
-1 cup raisins
Combine ingredients and add sauce.


Broccoli Slaw Sauce Recipe Ingredients
-2 cups mayonnaise
-½ cup sugar
-4 T. vinegar
Combine in a lidded plastic container and shake.

Chill until serving. If serving outside, be sure to place in a bowl filled with ice and stir occasionally since it contains mayonnaise.


Flip Flop Sugar Cookies
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: 10 minutes
Serves: about 30

Sugar Cookies Ingredients
-4 ½ cups flour
-2 sticks butter
-2 eggs
-2 cups sugar
-½ cup milk
-½ t. vanilla
-4 t. baking powder

Instructions
Preheat oven to 375. Butter multiple baking sheets. Combine dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder). Thoroughly mix together the butter and sugar. Add eggs, milk and vanilla to butter-sugar mixture. Slowly add dry ingredients in while beating well.

Important Step...Wrap the dough and chill in fridge for at least an hour before baking.

After cooling, roll out dough to ½ inch thick and cut with flip flop or (Easter) egg shaped cookie cutter. (www.cookiecutter.com is one source) Place cookies onto buttered baking sheets. Combine scraps and repeat until all the dough is made into cookies. Bake 8-10 minutes.

Once cooled, decorate the flip flops using bright colored icing. The thicker end is the top of the foot and the smaller side is the heal. Decorate by starting the icing at the big toe spot and making one side go to the base of the big toe and the other side go toward the pinky side. (Check out your own flip flops for a quick and easy model).

Click on the links above for homemade easy recipes and one really great ham.

Simple Appetizer is Great for a Potluck

Sometimes I get tired of the same old thing at potlucks. I brought this appetizer and some tortilla chips (Tostitos) to our last neighborhood party and it was devoured in no time. Even though it seems a bit (spicy) hot for kids, they seemed to enjoy it as much as the adults. This is another one where the sum of the ingredients tastes much better than it sounds on paper. It originated with Mike who used to have a variation of it at a restaurant in his college town.

Mike's Appetizer Dip with a Kick!
2 cup cottage cheese
1 cup sour cream
1 cup Monterrey jack (shredded)
½ cup chopped green onion to taste
1 T. minced garlic
Chopped jalapenos and ¼ cup juice to taste

Mix and chill.

If you are serving it outside, make sure to keep it chilled by putting it into another bowl filled with ice. It usually goes fast but it's always better to be safe than sorry when it comes to dairy products outdoors.

Parmesan Chicken and another great birthday party

Most of my main dish recipes are done in the crock pot but sometimes I don't get my act together early enough for the slow cooking. In those cases, I often also don't plan far enough in advance to have a lot of recipe ingredients either which is why I love this simple baked chicken recipe from our friend Alana. The three ingredients used are ones that just about everyone has in their pantry or fridge. And the other bonus of this recipe, it smells amazing while it's cooking. So without further ado, here is a gourmet tasting chicken recipe that you can make in a snap:

Parmesan Chicken Alana
4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
1/2 cup bread crumbs
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
1 stick melted butter or margerine

Combine cheese and crumbs in a baggy. Melt butter and dip each chicken breast into the butter and then shake in the baggy. Place in a baking dish and bake uncovered at 350 for 45 minutes. Turn over about half way through.

This is great with rice pilaf. I swear by the 90 second rice from Uncle Bens. We also served it with leftover sweet potato casserole and green bean casserole (from my website http://www.pams-hams.com/) which created a nice presentation if I do say so myself!

Puppy themed 7 year old girls birthday party
We have such creative friends! Many of these cute little girl birthday parties are not only fun for the girls attending, but are a blast for the moms who are dropping them off and watching a few of the festivities. Julia's party last weekend was a real favorite with the puppy theme. And one of the best parts for the birthday girl's mom is the simplicity of these types of off-site parties. I'd much rather spend my time making prizes and planning fun games than setting up or cleaning up! So read on for some simple party tips:

Where: At a pet store in our area (Family of Pets). They have a build-a-bear type machine with which the party guests can make their own stuffed dog. Additionally, the kids spend much of the time playing with the puppies in little puppy run pens. Julia also brought her puppy who had just turned one and was from that very store.

Prizes: The cute stuffed puppy would have been plenty but Julia's mom is too creative to stop there! She had a paw print gift bag for each girl that contained a candy necklace (collar), a little doggy bowl with their name on it (made labels with the computer) filled with what looked like kibble but was really cinnamon cookies, dog ear headbands, a plastic bone filled with pretzels and puppy stickers. The pictures of these girls with their headbands are going to be precious.

Activities: Playing with the puppies and making the stuffed animals took up most of the time. The girls also had snacks*, played pin the tail on the puppy, and had a puppy coloring page.

Bonus: Julia doens't have a lot of the webkinz and littlekinz dogs so they were simple gift ideas that we knew she'd like. She also got a new Nintendo DS so games like Nintendogs were a super idea. *this particular store has a party room next door so you can eat - many of the pet stores do not which is also fine but just results in a shorter party .

A fun girls 7th birthday party if you like High School Musical

As always, we have a blast with birthday parties around here and I'm usually in charge when it's a girl's birthday party. My daughter picks the theme based on what she loves that year. This year we had a high school musical party theme even though it was a few months after HSM2 came out. It ended up being a beautiful day so we were able to mix things up with some outside and some inside activities. Always a bonus with first grade girls. A fun time was had by all and we did some great activities. Hoping you may find a few good party tips in this overview:

Games and activities: Really anything that either uses High School Musical music or involves cheerleading or sports is fair game. Since it was a 7 year old girls birthday party, we did the following:
- decorate a megaphone craft (orientaltrading.com) Great while you wait for everyone to arrive
- musical chairs with HSM music (actually did it outside with placemats on the ground instead of chairs - MUCH easier)
- scavenger hunt using HSM clues and/or searching for HSM items
- freeze game with HSM music (they dance around until the music stops and then need to freeze in their spot)
- yearbook questions - this was definitely the highlight - and it was also the prize for them to take home. See details below. The girls spent the last hour filling out their yearbooks and getting autographs from each other.

Prize/giveaway: a homemade HSM yearbook. We used a blank journal and wrote East High Wildcats on the cover. Then we decorated the first 6 pages with characters from HSM and wrote a few simple Q&As. (downloaded their pictures from internet and taped into the yearbook). We then took a picture of each girl that game to the party, color copied them, and cut/pasted them into the next 10 pages of the book. We had written their names in advance as well as the couple questions. For these first graders who are just learning to read and write, they were pretty basic. Birthday, Favorite Color and Nickname. They wrote the answers to the questions themselves and had a great friendship keepsake to take home.

Time: 1pm - 4pm (avoids lunch!)

Where: our house. We have a boathouse so we were able to set up the party in there. Any toy room, garage or good sized living room would also work well. Or outside if you live in a better climate than I do!

Decorations: 2 high school musical posters (can then be put in her room), streamers in red and white (wildcat colors) and HSM themed paper goods from CelebrateExpress.com

Food: Snacks set out the whole time for them to munch. Veggie tray, pretzels and goldfish tray, drink yogurts, and meat and cheese tray. (we use cut up turkey meat sticks). Cookies for dessert.

What's cookin' this week?

So simple baked pork tenderloin
We had one of our all-time favorite dishes this weekend. It's a baked pork tenderloin (or any cut of pork like roast, loin, chops. Your cook times would just vary depending on the size.) The key is the amazing sauce that it cooks in. It's almost one of those "guess what is in this" type concoctions because it really doesn't taste like what I'm about to describe.

We served it with the 90 second Uncle Bens rice that I always talk about and some lightly fried asparagus. The asparagus was leftover from the night before when we'd served it steamed (whole bunch only takes 7 minutes in the micro if you put just an inch of water at the bottom of a covered microwavable container.) Since we like our aspragus a little crunchy, it still had enough umph after that first day to allow it to be fried the second day. The aspragus was stored in a ziploc bag so I just tossed in some breadcrumbs, salt and pepper and then fried them on the stove top in a little bit of olive oil. Yummy!

Here is the recipe for the baked pork tenderloin:
1 1/2 lbs. pork tenderloin
1 can cream of chicken soup (can be cream of anything really - mushroom, celery, etc.)
coupla squirts catsup (say 2T)
coupla squirts worcestershire sauce (say 2T)
(I've made this a bunch of times with no measurement tool available and coupla squirts worked just fine.)
Bake in a covered baking pan for almost 2 hours at 325. I took the cover off for the last half hour.

I know it doesn't sound good but trust me when I tell you this one is a real crowd pleaser and as simple as can be.

Today in my Crock Pot - Southwest style chicken
We're switching to chicken since we had pork the last two nights. I have great luck throwing all sorts of pantry items into a crock pot for something different each time. Some staples that work well with crock pots are the cream of (anything) soups, chicken and beef broth soups, french onion and golden mushroom soups, cheddar cheese soup, tomatoes (either soup or diced), roasted red peppers, and crushed green chilis. The dried soups or soup mixes like beef bouillon, chicken bouillon, onion soup and taco seasoning are also handy. Of course, your tastes may differ from ours but these are what we keep around and use every week. Today's crock pot chicken is going to have a bit of a southwest flair to it. This is what I'm cooking as we speak:
- 2 large chicken breasts
- 1 can cream of mushroom
- 1 can cheddar cheese soup
- about 2/3 of a 28 oz. can crushed tomatoes
- 1 can crushed green chilis
Cook 8 hours on low, or in my case, 2 hours on high and 4 hours on low since I didn't put them in early this morning.

Party in the Planning
Just a few short days after our New Years fun, we're in the process of whipping up more festivities. This time for Kristin who is turning 40 at the end of the month (but SO doesn't look it). She had no desire to have a party but requested a girlfriend weekend with just a couple close friends with the preference of somewhere warm. Since the whole gang won't be able to attend the getaway, we're going to have a fun pseudo-spa night first so everyone can toast one of our youngest friends finally joining our ranks. We're going to follow Kelly's lead and request that one of our local nail places hold evening hours for our group of about 10. We can bring in a couple little simple munchies and some adult beverages (in plastic cups) while sitting around getting manicured and pedicured together. The real bonus in our case is that the salon is right next door to one of our nicer restaurants so we could tie in appetizers or dinner if the group chooses. A fun time should be had by all.

Then a week later, it'll be off to sunny (hopefully) Sanibel Island for a couple days in the sand with our new beach toes. Doesn't get much better than that. Thanks to all the hubbies for watching the kids so we can enjoy this girlfriend time.

If you try any of our party ideas or recipes, let us know what you think.

Family New Years Eve Party

This year we decided to try something new for new years eve. Since we all have a limited time left where our children would want to be with us, we invited families. Instead of destroying our house like we've done in years past, we opted to rent a party room at a local Hampton Inn. All the families rented a room there so we were safe and snug for the night. As it happened, we had a GIANT snowstorm that dumped about 12 inches of snow that evening. We were glad that no one risked driving on that dangerous night.

We invited all the families that our kids hang with because we made it BYO everything. The more people that came, the more food and drinks were brought. We figured the more the merrier and ended up with about 15 families. As for the food, there was everything from a ham from pams-hams (of course that was my contribution) to homemade cookies, to cheese and sausage trays to fruit and veggies. It is amazing how those potlucks always work out to have the perfect mix of foods.

One thing I love about new years parties is how cheap and easy they are to decorate. We've done the colorful theme and the silver/gold theme before and had some leftover decorations from both so we just mixed it all together for this one. 50 balloons tied to the backs of chairs and a few dollar store table clothes made the room look festive for all. The throw in the blowers, cheap (6 for a dollar) bead necklaces and popper packs in the middle of the tables and you've got yourself a party. When we had it at our house, we put the balloons in a giant plastic holder (from any party supply) and dropped them from the upstairs bridge at midnight for a festive touch.

The hotel had a pool so that was a big event for the night - especially since it was snowing outside. Linda brought a karaoke machine which ended up being one of the other big hits with the little ones. I think we've all heard enough High School Musical for a while. Connor also brought a guitar and quietly strummed away in the background. It was especially fun when one of the dads started giving him some tips - wow was he talented. Next year we may get dueling guitars! At midnight we watched the ball drop and made big noise and messes with poppers and cheap new years noisemakers.

We joined efforts and had the room cleaned up in a flash (which set a great example for the kids because believe me, those poppers left a mess). I'm not sure what we'll do next year but I would recommend this option to anyone who wants to have a family party without concern for the size of your house.