party | you and mie

For Yuki’s 4th birthday, we decided to throw a small party with a couple of her friends. We were talking about a theme (though the theme was definitely more for me, than for her), and I was really hoping that she wouldn’t say “Frozen.” Not that there is anything wrong with a Frozen party, but I just didn’t have it in me to do anything else Frozen related. So I googled “summer party themes” and as we were scrolling through, Yuki yelled out “watermelon!” It’s one of her favorite fruits. She probably called out a few other ideas, but I was pretty psyched about a watermelon theme, so I steered her in that direction (I love that we can still do that with her and yet she totally thinks it was all her idea) and off to Pinterest I went!

I started a Watermelon Party Pinterest board to collect my ideas, but the project we started with first was the invites, of course! I think I was inspired by these party favor holders, but I basically thought it would be fun to get Yuki involved by painting some watermelon invites!

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Did you watch the Oscars last night? We went to our friends’ party and it was so fun! I enjoyed seeing the winners announced, but my favorite part was the food as I mentioned in the last post. So here are our 2 dishes revealed!

Please tell me that someone out there has seen “The Help.” No one at the party had seen it! So the joke fell a little flat. Don’t worry, I left out the special ingredient.

I used this recipe which I think is the one they used to make the actual pies in the movie! It came out pretty good, I think, though I’m not sure what it was supposed to taste like. It looked like a big fudgy brownie in a pie crust, but it was actually quite soft (not dense, like a brownie). I’m not a huge chocolate pie fan, so I probably won’t make this again, but if you’re into chocolate pie, I’d recommend it! It’s not the prettiest looking thing, but I do think it looks like the one they had in the movie, so points for authenticity! 🙂

This one was Hideko’s idea. We haven’t even seen The Artist, but we couldn’t resist making The tArtist. I considered doing a black and white chocolate tart (since the movie is in black and white), but a fruit tart seemed so much yummier. Plus I was already making the chocolate pie. I used this recipe from Paula Deen. It was easy to make, SUPER yummy and the presentation is pretty impressive, if I don’t say so myself! I’m definitely going to make this again!

We didn’t win for best dish, but we certainly had a delicious meal last night and tried two new great recipes. Next year I’ll try to start my planning earlier and might even ask for your help for ideas.

The other contest for the night was to predict the winners for all the categories. I didn’t realize The Artist was a favorite for so many of the major awards! I’m tempted to see it just because it won so much, but I’m really not so sure I’d like it. I’m into some artsy stuff, but silent? I dunno bout that . . .

We don’t get out to see movies in the theater very often, but in a last ditch effort to see as many Best Picture nominated movies we watched 4 movies in the last week or so! In total we watched 5 of the nine nominated! We saw The Decendants, Hugo, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, The Help, and Moneyball. Not bad!

Did you watch the Academy Awards? Any surprise wins for you? What were your favorite movies of last year?