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Wine Tasting Party: Stage a relaxed, casual wine tasting party with friends. Invite 12 - 14 guests; one bottle of wine can be poured in small amounts for 12 – 14 people. Choose to compare four to six wines and set a theme for the tasting; maybe compare six different Cabernets or compare three Cabernets and then three Chardonnays. If you want to turn it into a competition ask friends to bring a bottle of wine, put the wines in bags to hide the labels. Pour a small amount in each glass and let the guests taste (everyone thinks his or her wine will be the favorite and that’s part of the fun). Print a “scoring sheet” off the Internet to rate the wines and then collect the sheets and tally the scores. Offer a bottle of Champagne to the guest who brought the overall favorite wine. Serve lots of simple, rustic foods; bread and crackers with a variety of cheeses, bowls of olives, crudités, thick sliced roast beef on crostini toasts with Roquefort cheese, red grapes, pear and apple slices. You can tailor the menu to the varietal of wine you will be tasting, smoked salmon or shrimp with white wine and Beef or pork with red wine, just make sure it’s mostly finger food. As always have lots of candles lit and great music playing when your guests arrive! See below on how to set up a wine charm bar so your guests can make their own wine charms as a fun keepsake!
Valentine’s Single Girls Spa Night: Invite all your single girlfriends over for a spa night at your place! Hire a manicurist and a masseuse to come to your home, and if you’re low on cash check out your local beauty school- there’s sure to be some good students that would love the experience and the chance to get some new clients. Ask your guests to each bring a comfy robe, slippers and wine or champagne. You provide some simple appetizers and great ambiance; make sure to have super music playing and lots of scented candles. Your guests will leave feeling pampered and pleased and wondering if they really need a guy anyway!
Saturday Brunch “Mixer” with Single gal pals – Each gal is required to bring a single, straight guy that she thinks is great (in a “non-romance” kind of way)
- Fun homemade Valentines for invites
- Mimosas with blood orange juice to get the conversation “flowing”
- Easy cheese/spinach strata, fresh fruit, biscuits and chocolate dipped strawberries
- Play charades to get people interacting with each other (not to mention laughing pretty hard too!)
Valentine’s Cocktail Party –“Must Wear Pink to Drink”
- Send fun invitation “Must wear Pink to Drink!”
- Make fun cocktails: martinis with pomegranate seeds, vodka and pink lemonade, champagne and blood orange juice, pomegranate margarita’s
- Food can be as simple or as complex as you like –
- Make small goodie bags for guests with valentine chocolates and candies, include a homemade CD “Love” songs – make a compilation of all the songs you “Love”
- Decorate with lots of pink carnations, roses, lilies
Outdoor Ice Skating Lunch for Friends and Family-
- Use a fire pit to not only cook but to keep everyone warm, set up portable chairs around it
- Bring thermoses of tomato soup, giant chocolate chip cookies, Hot tea/ Hot chocolate and roast hot dogs and marshmallows over the fire
- Bring extra mittens, socks and blankets for when little ones get wet and cold
- Put name tags on mugs for refills of hot tea/hot chocolate
Romantic Dinner for two -
- Set a small table near the fire, in front of a window, or in the bedroom
- Use a tablecloth, good silver, fine china and crystal
- Use only candlelight, play soft romantic music anything from Beethoven to Barry white
- Start with finger food, use your hands –
- Serve multiple courses yet simple food –
- Main course can be prepared ahead of time and popped in the oven for low maintenance
- Music: Diana Krall, The Brazil Project, Marvin Gaye, John Coltrane, Jimmy Scott, Cole Porter
“Current Attraction” – A Comfort food dinner and a romantic movie
- Light only candles in living room, set out wine and glasses
- Set trays with good placemats, napkins and silver for eating in front of the TV
- Have soft blankets to snuggle under after you’ve finished dinner while you watch the rest of the movie
- Romantic Movie Choices: Out of Africa, Sabrina, The Piano, Babette’s Feast, Annie Hall, Doctor Zhivago, Casablanca, Desk Set, High Society, Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Libby’s Easy, Inexpensive Valentine’s Décor Ideas
Wine Charm Bar: Let your guests get creative and have them make their own wine charms. Set up an area close to the bar with 1” hoop earrings, beads and small novelty charms (available at craft stores). Wine charms are great conversation starters and at the end of the evening your guests can take them home as a fun reminder of the evening.
Tea Light Table: line up tons of tea lights or votive candles down the center of your table, as many as you can get. It’s simple to do, and it’s a beautiful and modern look.
Individual Flowers: Buy a bunch of flowers with large blooms; lilies, gerber daisies, or amaryllis are good. Cut each flower at the base of the bloom and put each one in an individual shot glass or small drinking glass. Put them in groups of 3 and set them on tables, bar and buffet. It’s fast and it’s a great look for your party!
Beautiful Bar: Turn a plain table into a festive bar with a brightly colored scarf, ribbons or table runner down the center of the table. Top it with flowers, candles, glasses and bar accoutrement, you can be sure your guests will gather there!
Multitasking Martini Glasses: Don’t just use your Martini glasses for drinks, let them do double duty and use them as serving pieces for dips, nuts and olives. They look great on a tray surrounded by crackers, and crudités.
Mirror Image Candles: Buy 12” x 12” mirror tiles at a home improvement store set them on entrance tables, cocktail tables, bars and buffets. Put lots of votive candles or tea lights on top of them and they’ll reflect the warm glow of the candlelight.
IPod Deejays: Have your guests bring their Ipods with preprogrammed play lists and let people take turns Deejaying, just suggest that they keep the music upbeat!
Party Photos: Leave out an instant Polaroid camera and lots of film, let guests take pictures of one another. When guests leave hand out the pictures as a fun memento of ringing in the New Year!
Fast, Festive Flowers: You can make a quick and gorgeous flower arrangement by taking a bunch of the same type of flowers, preferably with thick stalks (calla lilies, sunflowers and amaryllis are good choices). Tie the flowers together with a wide beautiful ribbon and set them inside a glass vase or glass ice bucket filled only a quarter of the way up with water.
Vodka Bottle Frozen in Flowers and Ice: Place one 750mL round vodka bottle into a fully opened half-gallon cardboard milk or juice carton. Insert flowers or thinly sliced fruit around bottle, filling one-third of the carton. Pour water into container, just covering fruit and flowers. Place upright in the freezer. When completely frozen, add another layer of fruit or flowers and very cold water, and freeze, so that fruit and flowers do not float to the top, until water reaches bottle neck. Remove from freezer just before serving; cut away milk carton with a utility knife.
Libby’s Ideas for Hosting a Cheap & Chic Cocktail Party:
- keep it fun and relaxed – make what you can and buy what you can
- order a cheese pizza, cut it into bite size squares, sprinkle with fresh basil and rosemary and call it “focaccia”, keep a back-up warm in the oven
- make sure when guests arrive that the lights are low, music is playing and drinks are ready to be poured (25 – 40 watt light bulbs will set the mood)
- cut crudités’ the night before, wrap in a damp paper towel and store in plastic bags in the fridge – it’ll be perfectly crispy and ready to go!
- Buy a loaf of French bread (bread’s an inexpensive “filler” for a cocktail menu), a pound of rare roast beef sliced thick and some prepared horseradish sauce – cut small pieces of the beef, set on the bread and top with sauce
- Use unusual items in your home in different ways for serving pieces – put cherry tomatoes in a vase, “stand up” your crudités’ in a glass, put dip in a martini or wine glass, use a colorful scarf or wrap as a table runner, use a galvanized paint bucket for ice, – use items that will give your table height!
- Instead of champagne serve less expensive European Proseccos and Cavas. At $7 to $15 a bottle they are equally delicious and just as festive!
- If money’s tight for décor, splurge on lots of candles, set votives in drinking glasses and rim the edge of the glass with sprigs of rosemary. Get one type/color of flowers – Bunches of red carnations are really cheap and they’ll last up to a month, just make sure you get a bunch of them!
- Think outside the box when it comes to décor, Fill a bowl with red Christmas ball ornaments for bright hits of red, use glass pitchers as hurricanes for pillar candles, , buy white paper cocktail napkins and stamp them with your initial in red ink, fill a bowl with fresh cranberries and nestle tea lights in them, stick little gold stars on clear plastic cups to dress them up…Have some fun and enjoy your guests – a harried host is a killjoy!
- If you have family heirloom pieces of silver or crystal USE Them!!!! What in the world are you waiting for?
- Have a Polaroid camera on hand, take pictures when guests walk in, (you can also pass this job off to one of your more outgoing single friends) tape the pictures onto blank pages in a diary. Have guests write a little something next to their picture on the page before they leave, it gets people talking and it gives you a fun keepsake of your party!
Valentine’s Day Crafts/ Cards
- Make valentine boxes with doilies/craft paper and fill with homemade chocolates or fudge
- Make edible valentines – make cookies, ice them and then write your sweet nothings on them. Put each one in a glassine envelope and seal with a heart shape sticker. These are for hand delivery only!
- Write romantic words on small paper disks and place beneath chocolates in a box
- Make a pink carnation heart shaped wreath using dampened florist foam and hang on your door with pink double-faced satin ribbon – it will last at least 1 week
- Make transparent hearts to hang and liven up your windows in February – melt pink, red and coral crayons onto wax paper with an iron, cut out hearts and hang in window
- Wrap small gifts (tickets, jewelry, etc.) in homemade paper hearts and ribbon
- Glue silk rose petals to a yogurt container, overlapping them as you go- fill with tiny sweetheart rose arrangement and give it to an elderly friend who may not have a sweetheart
- Write a romantic poem on tinted vellum and wrap a romantic gift in that
Décor Ideas
- Garnish party trays and serving platters with cherries and pomegranate seeds
- Put a grouping of red pillar candles on a cake stand and surround them with chocolates, handwrite little notes on paper discs and set below each chocolate so even when someone takes a chocolate there’s something sweet left behind!
- Place colored candy hearts in a vase or martini glass to surround a pillar or votive candle, or sprinkle some of the candy hearts on a tray or table to give that extra little touch.
- Fill a silver bowl with red Christmas balls for a punch of color, just turn all the tops of the ornaments down so they look like shiny red balls instead of ornaments
- Cut a small slit in the top of a wine or champagne cork and use it as a placecard
Food Ideas
- Red cranberry “cider” – warm cranberry juice with mulled spices and orange.
(The dark rum is up to you!)
- Pancakes in the shape of hearts – it’s easy to pour the batter into that shape
- Use varying sizes of heart shaped cookie cutters to cut out pie crust dough and top a berry pie with tons of hearts and bake!
- Make heart shaped chocolate wafer cookies and fill two cookies with ice cream for a valentine’s day ice cream sandwich – wrap in wax paper, wrap in a bow a serve after dinner
- Make easy yet impressive chocolate turnovers, with store bought puff pastry and good quality chocolate
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