A Rogue's Revolution

This was not an official James and Erin Party, as Erin was not involved. It was my housemate Collin's birthday party and he wanted a theme. So he came up with a Rogue's Revolution. The party was revolution themed and people were asked to come dressed as dastardly people. Our decorations were:

• Regal Banners
• Ballroom draperies
• Cockades
• Fancy table things
• Netting
• Red lighting
• Candles
• Gambling things
• Bear skin rug
• Smoke Machine
• Balloons
• rug

We did not have time to make food for this one unfortunately.

Collin and I took my absurdly long roll of paper and cut 5, 5' segments. We pointed the end (1' from the bottom) and painted them blue. I made a stencil of the fictional "Empire" logo (A regal R) and traced it onto the banners. We painted them on and did a 1" silver trim all around the banner. We took one of them and burnt holes into it (outside!) and one single splatter of red pair (blood) as a torn up banner.

We hung 2 banners in the front hall as people came in. We took red table cloths and cut them in half. We drooped them 2 per wall to made fancy ballroom draperies. At every intersection, we also draped a half table cloth. At the intersections in the middle of the wall, we put cockades (google it). I don't really understand how Collin made it, but he did. The corners had blue balloons and silver ribbon. We also tied the centre of the vertical drapes with gold ribbon. We put a rug from Collin's room that really pulled the space together

I had a long red strip of fabric that we used as a table runner and I painted my candelabra (from Halloween) gold and silver to give that fancy look. We also draped the other two good banners in front of the doorway to the kitchen.

We created a tavern/rogue base in the kitchen. With a deep red light and many, many candles, the space became something sinister. We put out cards and dice and a few other accessories Collin and I had in out rooms. I put the smoke machine on top of the cupboards and set it off every so often. One of our friends left a plush, flat bear thing and we used it as a bear skin rug. We also hung the netting up too. We hung the wrecked banner up in the kitchen as well.

It was a sparse party, but a fun one. Again, no pictures...

Jungle Fever

Our next party was not till the new year. We held Jungle Fever on January 21st 2013. Erin and I both stopped wanting to do parties after the school year began so we could focus on work. Come the new year, that changed and we wanted to do another party before school got too crazy. Hence, Jungle Fever! Our decorations included:

• Green table cloths for walls
• "Jungle Fever" sign
• Garbage Bag canopy
• Green lighting
• Vine canopy
• Waterfall with smoke machine
• Tree
• Streamer vines
• Netting
• Feathers
• Candles
• Wire vines

Our food was:

• Worms in dirt (Gummy worms in pudding)
• Blue jell-o shots
• Sugar cookies

For the front hall, we put up green tablecloths to cover doors and the stairs (so people stayed on the first floor). I also hung garbage bags on the ceiling and drooped them to create a canopy. The light at the end of the hall lit the up from above and created a fun shadow effect. We made a sign similar to the Club King sign from Pseudo Rave that said "Jungle Fever".

We garbage bagged the ceiling in the living room too. Using pushpins and fishing line, we made a grid that hung about 6" from the ceiling. Using two different shades of green streamers, we twisted them into vines and hung them on the gird, creating a vine canopy. We erected the tree from Midsummer Party and used (better) green balloons for the leaves. We put a lamp behind it and shined it upwards to make the tree "glow". We took the rest of the streamers and, in alternating shades of green, taped strands down the wall to make more vines.

We made a waterfall in the "nook" area of the living room. I took two large pieces of cardboard and taped them to the wall. I took the gazebo grid lights from Midsummer and draped them on the cardboard pieces. I also places my fog machine (from Walmart around Halloween time) at the bottom. I then covered the lights with blue fabric and table cloths to create a water effect. I made a little pool at the bottom as well. I also used pieces of batting to make "foam". During the party, I would periodically spray the fog mating for effect.

We put the wire vines from Midsummer up in the kitchen by wrapping them around cupboard handles. We spread out the netting over the hutch in there as well. We spread out a number of feathers from the dollar store and a few tea lights for atmosphere.

Our worms in dirt was a layer of pudding mixed with gummy worms and a layer of cookie crumbs. It was a big hit, if a little messy.

This party was a HUGE success. We had the most people yet. We received a call from the neighbours asking us to be quiet, so mew quieted the music and moved the tablecloth blocking the upstairs so we could spread out the people, thus the noise. We regretfully did not take pictures this time either. :(

Pseudo Rave

Our last party of that summer we termed Pseudo Rave. I love the rave scene and have wanted to have one for a while. We called it Pseudo because we did not have the drug portion of rave culture present. Our decorations included:

• Garbage bag walls
• Garbage bag doors
• Black lights
• Glow sticks
• "Club King" sign

We did not have as much food this time. We had:

• Sugar cookies
• 2 layer jell-o shots

This prep took a bit longer than the rest. Erin and I spent two solid days putting garbage bags on every wall of my living room (we did not do the ceiling). We also cut up some garbage bags and used them as  "doorways" to block incoming light. We made a sort of tunnel going from the front hall into the living room with garbage bags. We made a sign out of coloured paper and yarn that said "Club King" outside the tunnel. We turned on the light behind it at low to give it a glow effect.

I had ordered 300 glow sticks from online. Big mistake there. It would have been cheaper to get the 15 piece tubes from Michael's for $1.50. I also ordered 3 black light incandescent bulbs, one of which was shattered on delivery. I have since learned to never use those types of bulbs again. They get REALLY hot and do not work as well as the fluorescent ones. We used two bulbs, one above and one to the side.

Before the party, Erin and I moved all the furniture out of the living room to give as much dancing room as possible. We left the couches in the "nook" for resting. We moved the table into the kitchen for snacks and drinks. Her and I covered the ground with table cloths and splattered glow sticks onto the walls. As these were crappy glow sticks, they did not last long and the effect was not what we wanted.

We made simple sugar cookies to keep us going. The jell-o shots were a little different this time. We did a layer (Half a shot glass) of orange in half the cups and a layer of yellow in the other half. The next day, we did a layer of green on the orange and a layer of blue on the yellow. We used a small box of each colour. BIG hit.

I made the play list this time around (as electronic music is my area of love). A lot of thumping bass.

This was the first party we had to have the police show up. It seems our neighbour called them. As before every party, we tell both our neighbours that we are having a party and I give out my cell phone number. As they did not try to call us or come over, the police could only tell us to quiet down. I was sober and talked to them and they seemed pleasant enough. I would recommend both talking to neighbours and brushing up on your local noise laws. Keep speakers away from adjoining walls can also help.

Some people went all out for this. A lot of flashing lights and glow things came from the dollar store but worked great anyways. I had neon yellow shorts and t-shirt and SO MANY GLOW STICKS. We, unfortunately, have no pictures from this night.

APAV GADA

"Wii would like to play!"

Our second party was in July. We called it APAV GADA, a name that, unfortunately, only caught on with Erin and I. It meant A Party About Video Games And Drinking Alcohol. It started as a want to have a Pokemon party, but we decided to expand our audience. Our
decorations included:

• Paper Mario Star Spirits
• Nintendo icons (Coins, mushrooms, ect)
• Portal Doorways
• Rainbow road
• Gaming stations
• Minecraft tree

Our food included:

• Triforce Brownies
• Mushroom Muffin Tops
• Pokeball sugar cookies
• Star sugar cookies
• Portal (orange and blue) jell-o shots

Erin and I thought of the most popular video games. Nintendo first sprang to mind, so in our prep week, we made 12 yellow coins, a red mushroom, a green mushroom, a star, and a fire flower. We hung most of them from the ceiling with silver craft wire (left over from Midsummer). I also made the 7 star spirits from Paper Mario and we put them on the wall.

We bunched up orange tissue paper and taped it to one side of the door, and blue tissue paper to the other side (Portal). We also covered the front hall floor in coloured paper as a rainbow road (Mario Kart). Lastly, we took the tree from midsummer, folded it into a box and made smaller green boxes to go on top to make a "Minecraft" tree.

I set up two gaming stations with TV's, N64s, PS2s, Xbox360, and Wii. People played all night.

The food was fun to do. I made butter scotch brownies and cut them into triangles to form Triforces. Erin made sugar cookies again, but made stars (Mario) and Pokeballs (Pokemon). For the stars, she added yellow food dye to the cookies. For the poke balls, she put red icing on one half with a brown M&M in the middle. We made more muffin tops, but iced them in white and used bottle caps to make "spots" while we sprinkled green sprinkles on top.

Our Jell-o shots were orange and blue.

We kept the normal lights up, and had music on low, as people were talking a lot.

Some costumes we saw were Haunter (me), Sims (Erin and a few others), Creeper, Skyrim adventurer, the two "Wii would like to play" guys from commercials, Generic Elf, Laura Croft, and more.

A very good success! My costume sucked because I spent more time on setting up than getting a costume ready, a lesson I would learn for the future.

Blue portal

Orange Portal

Termed "Rainbow Road of Death"

Jess and Erin (Back left)

Midsummer Night's Party

Our first party was on June 21st, also known as Midsummer Night. We took inspiration from that and made a Shakespeare theme party (based on A Midsummer Night's Dream). We decided my living room would be the forest while the outside deck would be the fairy world.

Our decorations consisted of:

• Fake paper mache tree
• Green wire vines with leaves
• Glowing balloons
• Grid Lights
• Fancy table covering
• Christmas lights

Our food consisted of:

• Sugar cookies shaped like leaves
• Chocolate chip muffin tops
• Green jell-o shots

"round" tree trunk

I set out on making the tree. I had a plethora of newspaper and glue lying around. I like to save boxes, and used one of the larger ones to make a trunk. I cut it so that it was as tall as possible, and bent it vertically to give it "roundness" like to the left (Measurements are not correct, just to give an idea of shape). I cut rigid cardboard and taped it to the back to give the folds strength.



I rolled up newspaper into tubes and taped them down all over it to create knots and texture. I paper mached over it (with a solution of 1\3 white glue and 2\3 warm water) to smooth it out a little bit. I then painted over the entire tree in a lighter brown and swirled darker brown over it for texture. I took a ball of newspaper and dipped it into dark green paint and dabbed it over the knots and rest of the tree for a "mossy" look.

Once the trunk was done, we worked on the vines. We bought green craft wire from the dollar store and some green tissue paper. We cut out leaf shapes from the tissue paper and taped them to the wire to create vines.

We did all this in the weeks before the party. What we always do AT LEAST 1 week before the party, is make the Facebook event. We photoshop a picture with the party name, have myself and Erin as hosts, and invite a lot of people. It is important to have specific things in Facebook events, and I'll do a post about that later. We had about 20 people come.

Tree

This was really all we prepped the week before. We always have a day (or more) before the party just for set up. The day before, we erected the tree and taped it to the wall (LOTS OF TAPE). We used green balloons to make the "leaves" of the tree. We ran out of green and used yellow as a back up. We took the cut out portions of the tissue paper and also taped that to the tree. We also taped the 2 wire vines we made up and over the doors.

We cracked glowsticks into white balloons and tied them to some silver craft wire and hung them outside. We also hung 2 large gazebo grid lights on the wall to have some outdoor light.

Table

We covered the large table in our living room first with green wrapping paper, then clear wrapping plastic with gold designs on top for a fancy feel.

The night before, we also made our cookies. We tend to make sugar cookies for every party, and the recipe is soon to follow. We put them on a leaf platter my housemate bought from the dollar store a while back. We made chocolate chip muffin tops (I have a pan that just makes the tops of muffins. Yup). We also prepared the jell-o shots, recipe also to come.

Vines and Lights

Night of, we turned out most of the lights and kept the kitchen one dim. We put a bunch of candles out and around for light and that mystic feel. We also hung some christmas lights one of my housemates had.

Some costumes featured at the event were Hamlet (myself) Titania (Erin), Puck, Hamlet's Father, fairies, and (another) Hamlet.

Overall, the party was a success! We played some games outside, but got rained out (ALWAYS CHECK THE WEATHER BEFORE HAVING OUTSIDE DECORATIONS). It also got REALLY hot inside, so we learned to turn up the AC before hand. The tree fell as the heat caused the tape to let go, but it was soon fixed. Midsummer Night was spent in costume, funny accents and with good friends.

Who are you?

Erin and I decided last year that, over the summer, we wanted to hold monthly theme parties while we were in St. Catharines for the summer. the ideas we had were:

• Midsummer Night's Party (Shakespeare)
• APAV GADA (Video Game)
• Psuedo-Rave (Rave)

We did one in June, July and August. We stopped for the school year, but I wanted to throw a Halloween Party to celebrate the success of the Haunted House I made. We also threw a Jungle Fever (Jungle) party in January. I helped plan my housemate Collin's birthday party which was called A Rogue's Revolution. We're just starting plans for our next part in June, with a space theme.

Through this blog, you'll find pictures of the parties (not as many as we'd like) and how-to's about each decoration/food item.