fondue birthday

For Scott's birthday this year I had the brilliant idea of doing a fondue party.  My thinking was he was born in the 70's so what could I do that correlated with that era?  Fondue was the winning idea.  I sent a blast out to all my DI people asking them to look out for fondue sets.  I was greatly rewarded with 3 sets and then I bought an electric one to add to the mix.  This was strictly a grown up affair.  We do tons of stuff for the kids so I didn't feel the least bit guilty to have this party with only the adults.  For my own children I just quarantined them to the basement with a new video game, movie, pizza, and popcorn.  They were more than content to have their own little pizza party without the grown ups.

I try to do something good for him every year not only because I love him but he never got birthday parties growing up.  There have been a lot of things he missed out on growing up and I love to be the one to help him experience all kinds of new adventures.

Incidentally his mother was here unexpectedly  for her birthday this year.  It was totally last minute and on a Sunday but she had to stop by the pharmacy for some extra medication and I very hurriedly baked a cake and had the kids make cards and paper flowers for her while she was gone.  We lit the candles, sang the song, and gave the cards and flowers. We even had the paper birthday hats.  It really wasn't much but she was so grateful.  It was then that I learned that that was her first birthday party ever!! She turned 63 and that was her first birthday party.  I gave my husband and his sister who happened to be there the look of extreme disappointment.  The claimed they had no idea.  I still think that is no excuse, but it does explain a lot.

The food was the easiest part.  I did a test batch of cheese a couple of nights before to make sure I had the recipe just right.  I did two cheese pots, cheddar and Havarti. With all the fixin's; meatballs, veggies, apples, 3 kinds of breads etc.  For the dessert fondue I made a milk chocolate and dark chocolate.  I tries 3 times to add this fancy caramel sauce to the milk chocolate so I could make a turtle fondue pot and all 3 times epic fail.  I couldn't figure it out.  So after wasting 3 pounds of precious chocolate I just set the caramel on the table for those who wanted to add it.  The beverages were a huge hit.  I found this Mexican market that sells our FAVORITE grapefruit soda.  I bought all they had.  Everyone was hesitant to ask if they could have another one because it is so precious but I assured them they were welcome.  Huge smiles all around!!

I feel like a party is more than just food so of course I had to add lighting.  Lighting makes everything better, lighting and music.  I hung these globe lights from the ceiling although when I fanned them out I just used tape.  That turned out to be a bad idea.  I set these up the day before but they kept falling down.  I lost 10 bulbs.  Finally Scott came to my rescue and we just stapled them to the wall.  

As for the games I thought long and hard about them.  A party needs games but they need to be appropriate for the event and the guests.  Because this was a mostly sit down affair I searched the Internet and came up with a few fun ideas.  

While we were waiting for people to arrive I had them write down something they wished and put it in a jar.  It could be something like, "I wish I could zap people every time they said something stupid. Or I wish I could travel to Africa.  They could put in as many as they liked.  Later in the evening I was going to pull them out and everyone had to guess whose it was.  For the person with the most correct guesses they got a gift card. 

To get the creative juices flowing I thought we could play a variation of the ABC game.  We were to say, "I love my love because they are. . . "  the first person comes up with a word that starts with "A" like affectionate and the next person has to say the "A" one and then come up with a "B" word like beautiful and so on and so forth.  If you forgot one you were out. Little did I know how hard this was going to be for people. But at least it got things going.   However the funnest game I thought was the "Silly remarks".  Ahead of time I came up with a bunch of silly comments or questions sometimes they were super random.  The guests were instructed to pull out a comment and try to work it into the conversation for the night with out someone catching on that it was a silly remark.  If they were successful they got a point and another remark to try.  This game worked out wonderfully.  An example of a silly remark was "your just upset that they never really told us how to get to sesame street." another one was, "I hope the zombie apocalypse doesn't start in Kenya.  there is no way we will be able to out run those guys." I think I might pull this game out again. 

It was a fun night.  Plenty of delicious food and just enough activity to keep it interesting.

  Happy birthday my love.