10 Creative New Year’s Party Ideas
Hello Sassies!
2010 is right around the corner, so there’s no time like the present to start planning your New Year’s Eve party! Here are a few of my fabulous tips to ensure a super sassy celebration:
1. Dim your lights and flood the house with votive candles. Candles are the most romantic and cost effective way to create a festive, sexy atmosphere! Be sure to pay special attention to where you put the candles; you will want to put them in safe locations. Your votives will burn longer if the day before your party, you put them in a ziplock bag and put them in the freezer.
2. Additionally, at any local home store (for example, Home Depot) you can buy colored light bulbs. For example, put pink bulbs in your lamps; you will be amazed at the difference it makes and the atmosphere it creates!
3. They are silly – yet fun – and people still love the traditional New Year’s Eve party items such as noisemakers, hats, tiaras, boas and horns. I always recommend putting these items on a platter or in a big decorative bowl and let people grab items as they wish.
4. Ask all of your guests to give you their three most favorite songs when they RSVP for the party. Once you have this list, create a custom CD with all guests’ favorites! Burn extra CDs for your guests with a custom cover that you can create on your computer, and give these to the guests as a favor.
5. Casino set-ups are going to be all the rage this New Year’s Eve. You can rent casino games from local vendors. Also consider creating your own special “play money” using your computer.
6. On New Year’s Eve there is absolutely nothing wrong with serving a specialty drink at the start of the party and champagne at midnight and inviting your guests to BYOB their favorites. As the host, you should provide all the set-ups such as soda, tonic, soft drinks, lemons, limes, etc.
7. For your menu, I recommend light snacks such as veggies and dip, pretzels, mini-pizzas, and chips. Then around 10:30 pm, I recommend a breakfast buffet. There are many wonderful breakfast casseroles that you can pre-make. Have some wonderful danishes and fruit. It’s a change for people and puts something in their stomachs toward the end of the evening. I would let people know you are going to do this on the invitation in case they would like to eat something more substantial than snacks prior to 10:30 pm.
8. At midnight, there will be lots of kissing going on and everyone ringing in the New Year! For this reason, consider placing mints in your bathroom!
9. Have available phone numbers for your local taxi cab companies in case some of your guests need assistance getting home.
10. As a favor, give your guests fun “Care Packages” in small paper totes for New Year’s Day. Put items in the bag such as aspirin, Alka-Seltzer, vitamin C and the CD of the all the music you created! Additionally, I like to give guests hot chocolate in a “to-go” container for the drive home!