The 83rd Annual Academy Awards!

In my opinion, this was one of the better years for movies (YAY!!! for The King's Speech). It had been a couple years since I've done an Oscars Party. Back in the day (in my pre-married, pre-Chris, living in an old historic downtown apartment building with all my friends, life in Montana) we use to have GRAND Oscars parties! The emphasis, back then, was moreso on the costumes. To this day, my friend Erin's Seabiscuit costume is my favorite; she sewed a brown body suit with a tail and then topped it all off with a HORSE HEAD MASK! It was amazing. AHMAZING. And someday, when I pay for full access to my Flickr account, I'll find the pictures and post them. (I hope you're reading this, Erin *heehee*).

So....back to this year. My friend Karyn asked me to do an Oscars party with her. She always knows how to lure me into things. And I can never say no to her! So, we set to it, planned, assigned duties and then I began obsessing. We sent out the evite to a small group of our friends (small, because...well...our house is small) and the party was well on it's way.

Party: The 83rd AAA
Theme: Goldy Glitz and Glam
Colors: Black, Gold, Red

Sadly, my pictures are pretty poor quality (many of them were rushed and/or the night after the actual party! haha). I didn't even get any pictures of the amazing food/drink/fine wine spread that everyone contributed too! *boo* But it was a FUN night!

Can I just say, "THANK YOU DOLLAR TREE!"? The picture frames and ALL of the popcorn tubs are from that store. The smaller tubs came in two packs! Talk about a great deal! And the table cloth is a black sheet I bought on clearance for $3. And the concessions sign, which is pretty-cool-if-I-do-say-so-myself, is the middle shelf from our Ikea coffee table with some printed/cut out letters and some 1 cent ribbon I got at the DOLLAR TREE! Yes friends....I paid 1 CENT for a roll of gold ribbon! Even the cashier was confused when she rung it up but apparently it was Christmas ribbon they were clearancing. I didn't know the Dollar Tree had clearance items!

Everyone LOVED the free concessions stand! Karyn got Hot Tamales, Junior Mints, Gummi Bears, Whoppers, Dots, and Milkduds.

Ahhh..the chandeliers. Chandeliers were the FIRST thought I had, when brainstorming how to add a little glitz and glam to our small ranch home. I immediately thought to use the (millions) of embroidery hoops I randomly bought (for 50 cents) at an estate sale last summer. I took some fishing line and attached double layers of gold tissue paper with glue. I had to do double layers for each circle because the other side of the paper was silver and I wanted ALL gold! This, by far, was the MOST painstaking, time consuming project. I started out using a small hoop and then when trying to figure out how to hang it, realized the large hoops would actually fit snugly around the base of our light fixtures. Personally, I think it paid off! They really "classed up" the joint.

Of course, if you're throwing an Oscars party and don't want to spend much, pilfer your gold Christmas ornaments/beads! And the fabulous damask print is just some $1 tissue paper I got...I put it EVERYWHERE! Again, the awesome Dollar Tree frames.

I didn't really know what I was doing with this. I really wanted to do something with the mantle but didn't want to spend much money buying statues, film, clappers or anything like what you'd get at a party supply store. This was totally free! Some Christmas beads, some old goldy fern things I bought at Michaels a couple years ago for my friend's baby shower decorations and some letters printed off and mod podged onto the mirror (hoping they'll peel off okay...).

Again, the tissue paper, spray-painted tin bucket I had lying around, some fake red gems, ballots, pencils...VOILA!

Got the ballots from Twig and Thistle. Loved how stylish they looked when printed up and folded. HATED how there were like 10 missing categories! I get it, they were the more obscure categories but it was kind of a bummer to not have all the categories. Next year, making my own ballots.

Ahhh...the RED CARPET! My original plan was to have a red carpet along our porch, leading up to the front door, lined with rope lights. However, that plan was fraught with all sorts of miscalculations. One of them, being how windy it was outside! That red carpet wouldn't have lasted 1 minute. Thankfully, I realized it wouldn't work, BEFORE attempting to make it work. So, we just made one inside. Guess what it's made of? A $1 plastic table cloth, from...THE DOLLAR TREE!

When Karyn first asked me about doing a party I immediately remembered the little Oscar cupcakes I made last year for my friend, Jamie's, Oscars party. I imagined how awesome it would be to have a display of a BUNCH of those cupcakes with the category cards in front of them. We had some leftover pizza boxes, so I wrapped those in some black wrapping paper and finished them off with gold/yellow ribbon. And it worked PERFECTLY as a little Oscar statue pedestal.

I also knew I needed to have a sign. Originally, I was just going to use posterboard. However, after wrapping the pizza boxes I thought, "why not spray paint this frame gold, cut a piece of this black paper and then add some printed letters?" And I did just that! Thanks to Karyn for the awesome...get ready...DOLLAR TREE roses!

Wanna know how to get an EASY chocolate ganache? Take a container of store-bought chocolate frosting and microwave it for 30-45 seconds, stir, and dip your cupcakes in it! And there you have a smooth, dark, frosted surface for your cupcake. I made the little Oscar by piping yellow melty candies onto freezer paper that had the Oscar logo printed on the other side (so, basically just traced it). Then, I dusted it with edible gold dust that you can buy at Michaels, in the baking aisle.

And these are the little Oscars that went home with the winners!

It was SUCH a FUN night! A great group of friends, great food, great drink, and a lot of my favorites won awards (Christian Bale, Melissa Leo, The King's Speech, Natalie Portman, etc) and others (read: The Social network) did NOT win for Best Picture or Directing! YAY!

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**Thank you, to TWIG AND THISTLE for the striped candy bag enclosure and ballott templates.

**Thank you, to HOSTESS WITH THE MOSTESS for the fancy movie label/place card templates.