Jess again.
I bought some cheezin' awesome fabric to make into goodie bags. I'll post photos later. I'm in the process of making little drawstring bags of awesomeness that can later be used as dice bags, etc. I can't wait to see how they turn out!!
The party is tomorrow!!
I'm going to Kroger and the liquor store tonight to purchase things for the party.
I plan to get stuff to make both red and white sangria. The red sangria will be labeled as grog/ blood for the pirates. The white sangria will be labeled as sake/ awesomeness for the ninjas to drink. Not that ninjas need more awesomeness... it is just what they prefer. I have a ton of little bottles of juice, so I'm going to put those to good use. Woohoo.
For the birthday boys, I need to make a fruit pizza and a pan of brownies in lieu of a traditional cake. Fruit pizza is delicious. It is not necessarily pirate-like in nature, but my pirate loves it. Since this blog is supposed to be informational, here is the recipe:
FRUIT PIZZA RECIPE
1 roll sugar cookie dough
1-8 oz. package of cream cheese
1/2 cup sugar
Fruit, sliced (we like grapes, kiwi, mandarin oranges, and all kinds of berries)
Spread the cookie dough over a pizza pan (or baking sheet, whatever) and bake until pale brown. Meanwhile, use your mixer to blend the cream cheese and sugar. This is the "sauce". When the cookie dough "crust" has cooled, spread the cream cheese mixture over the dough. Top with your sliced fruit, cut, and enjoy! You will love it.
I'll probably also make some delicious cheese dip. Another easy recipe. Here it is:
EASY CHEESEY DIP RECIPE
1 block of Velveeta (the big one)
1 can of Rotel brand chopped tomatoes and green chilis (I get the mild, but I don't like very spicy food)
1 lb. (ish) ground beef
Brown and drain your ground beef. Then roughly slice the cheese into the hot pan with the beef. Open the can of Rotel and dump the contents into the pan. Cook it on low-ish for a few minutes, until the cheese melts all of the way and everything is nicely coated in cheese. Serve with some tortilla chips.
I will probably be inspired to cook other things once I get to Kroger. I'll post about them when I do.
I went to Goodwill and scored some hot black pants-- the only thing I still needed for my ninja costume. I need to do some sewing on Jeff's costume tonight, but we are pretty much done with our outfits. :)
I can't wait for the party!!!
Things I have accomplished today this week:
1. Bought fabric for the goodie bags; started swearing sewing
Cost: $15 and most of my patience
2. Completed my ninja costume
Cost: $3.50 from Goodwill
3. Made grocery list; planned-ish menu
Cost: nothing yet; potentially ~$50
Total cost today: $18.50
Estimated additional cost today: $50.00
Total cost to date (actual): $96.00
Total cost to date (potential): $146.00 + sanity of two 20-something women
So this weekend I managed to paint the remaining 50/90 d6, and complete 90 Team Ninja challenge tokens. Ironically, they're stamped with the kanji for 'peace'. It seemed the Ninja thing to do.
I bought a linen kool-ots/dress thing from Goodwill for $2.00, and I'm hacking that apart to make wrappings for the chips. Add some silver satin cord and little team Ninja tags (complete with my home-made shuriken stamp that I am so proud of) and we have Team Ninja challenge token favors!
Complete with awesome table glare. Because at midnight on a Sunday I don't give a crap what my photos look like.
Things I have accomplished today this weekend:
1. Completed all the Team Ninja challenge tokens
Cost: Nothin' but time, baby.
2. Designed Team Ninja favors:
Cost: $2.00 dress from GoodWill
Total cost today: $2.00
Total cost to date: $77.50
Due to some unforeseen complications I am being forced to purchase new cups and another can of spray paint. It turns out that flat black spray paint will rub off of cheap Walmart plastic cups, even when dry. We're going to test this again, using glossy paint and slick plastic cups instead of the weird textured ones I had before.
The good news is that the rest of the spray painting was a complete success. I have 90 completely black d6, and 100 completely black poker chips.
I'm going to try to color the rest of the pips on the dice tonight to get them out of the way. I certainly hope that will be the most tedious part of this whole decorating experience. I'm really excited on coming up with a way to stamp / sticker the pirate and ninja logos onto the poker chips. Unfortunately I've come to a dead end as to how to do little drawstring pouches to put them in. I haven't found any appropriate fabric remnants yet. Hopefully something cheap and cool will turn up soon.
1, Got replacement cups and more spray paint
Price: $7.00
2. Picked up card stock for possible wall hangings
Price: $3.00
3. Painted the pips on about 40/90 d6
Price: Only my time
Total cost to date: $75.50
For $4.00 a pop I picked up a pirate devil duckie and a ninja devil duckie at the game / comic / hobby store near our house.
Things I have accomplished today:
1. Procured Team Pirate and Team Ninja Mascots
Price: $8.00
2. Got the rest of the items needed to make my pirate costume
Price: $8.50
Total cost to date: $65.50
I <3 alliteration. So over the past few days I have had fabulous spray paint adventures. I'm currently in the process of turning these ordinary cheap items into super fab party favors / game pieces:
Coming shortly, more painted items!
Hey there- this is "the friend" and this is my first PvN blog. You can call me Jess. First, I would like to say that ninjas are far superior to pirates in all ways, especially sexiness and hotdog eating contests. Take that, pirates!
So, I am also cheezin excited about this party. I think much more so than Jeff. Of course, he didn't get excited about going to GREECE until like 5 days beforehand. Dork.
Here is the invitation. I'm going to send it out tonight.
Gosh, I love this invitation. It makes me giggle.
Jeff and I went to Goodwill last night and scored a puffy shirt and some boots for his costume. I still need some black pants and he needs a sword. The shirt will need some alterations, but it's nothing I won't be able to pull off.
Jeff and I were talking about drinks last night. He suggested having two big pitchers: one labeled "Grogg" and the other "Sake", but both with the same alcoholic beverage. I was thinking about making some delicious peach white sangria. I made it last year for July 4 and it was great. Ingredients include:
- Sprite
- Sweet white wine
- Vodka (a bunch)
- Orange liqueur
- Frozen peach juice concentrate
- Lemon and lime juice
- Sliced lemons and limes to float
I still have many more things to think about.
Oh yeah, for the "I challenge you" game, I think people should be able to challenge anyone that they want, since ninjas are backstabbers and pirates are, well, pirates. :)
1. Making the invitation
Cost: free/ my lunch hour
2. Pirate shirt and boots purchased for Jeff
Cost: $10.00; I love Goodwill
Cost to date: $49.00
Here's a great pic of the dollar store super ninja playsets:
And here is one of the super sweet foam swords:
Hurray! Tomorrow I will post of delightful spray paint adventures.
Blah. I just realized that in my haste to get my loot cleaned up I accidently threw away one of the packs of poker chips. Fortunately I haven't done anything to them yet so I'm only down the $1.50, but it does mean I'll have to trek back to the gates of hell WalMart to procure another pack.
Boo.
1. Being seriously absentminded
Cost: Free in theory, $1.50 in practice
Total cost today: $0.00
Total Cost to date: $39.00
Today marks the first day that actual money has been put into the pirate vs. ninja party project. So far I have purchased:
1 can of black spray paint ($0.97 per)
2 packs of Bicycle poker chips ($1.50 per)
9 packs of d6 ($1.00 per)
4 foam swords ($1.00 per)
5 super sweet ninja play-sets ($1.00 per)
2 pirate play-sets, mostly for my costume ($1.00 per)
4 four piece sets of plastic tumblers ($1.14 per)
1 brand new Xacto knife ($4.00 per)
1 3-pair of super pirate hoops for my costume ($3.99 per)
1 Pirate (soon to be versus Ninja) 'Happy Birthday' banner ($1.00 per)
The Dollar Store, besides being a haven for wackos who follow me around taking pictures of me with their cell phone, saved my ass on this whole party thing. Especially when it comes to the foam swords thing. I really thought I'd have to work harder than that to find them. It was sadly disappointing in the whole tiny plastic pirates / ninja to top the cake with department. So was Walmart. And Goodwill pulled a big fat zero in all applicable party categories. (Just wait until costume time though!) I am going to have to start looking in stranger places for cake toppers. Tomorrow, I will consult the Wonderful Wizard of Oz internet and see what advice it has.
I also had my first moment of fiscal weakness today, when I realized that the dollar store had ninja play sets. They have tiny plastic shuriken and other ninja things. I picked up a bunch even though I'm pretty sure we didn't need them because I think it's going to be harder for people to find cheap ninja accessories than it will be to find cheap pirate accessories. However, I'm ok with it because not only was it just five dollars but I'd have paid more than that to watch the guys beat the crap out of each other with plastic sai.
Once I have mini-notebooks and felt squares I'll have all the ingredients I need to put together Liar's Dice and Challenge Me. This is very exciting because we are less than a week into things, and usually it takes me that long to get motivated, even if I'm really excited about something.
I'm really looking forward to starting to customize the poker chips and dice, and not just because spray paint fumes make me all giddy. I think this is going to look really, really cool. Hopefully tomorrow instead of working through my lunch like usual I can upload some of the pictures of the ninja play sets and foam swords.
1. A significant amount of shopping
Cost: $39.00, rounding up after tax
2. Made a list of items I still need to buy
Cost: Free, for now
3. Got harassed at a Dollar Store
Cost: Two bruised knuckles and some of my precious remaining sanity
Total cost to date: $39.00
Today I got in touch with my friend (god, I really need to think of a better pseudonym for her) and we went over some party ideas. I pulled a lot of stuff off the internet for inspiration, so if you're tooling around on here and see something that looks vaguely familiar, thanks! The source that I got most of my pirate-themed ideas from is here. So if you re-use any of their stuff be sure to spread the love!
Ok, the games. Jess and I decided that because our mens and all of their friends love to be competitive anything that we could widget into being a one on one conflict or a team game would pretty much take care of all their entertainment needs. After some consideration and weeding out potential bad ideas (like the Mortal Kombat tourney, but mostly because they wouldn't stop to play anything else) we came up with / stole (go pirating!) these:
Liar's Dice: At least one giant round of liar's dice will take place. This will not only level the playing field for those of us with less than MENSA math skillz, it will lead to some great smack talk. After the big game there can be several smaller games is people are interested.
The upside to Liar's Dice is that it is incredibly entertaining even for people who are 'out', it's really easy to learn, and it's cheap as shit to play. As far as I know there are no downsides. We're making it special by customizing the dice cups and sets to correspond with the team's themed colors. The dice sets will also serve as great party favors so the time and whatever cash we end up spending will be totally worth it.
Challenge Me: This is an idea that I pretty much stole directly from Party Diva's site and modified slightly to better suit the party theme. Basically we're going to give everyone who shows up team tokens and tell them to go out and harass members of the other team in a challenge of their choosing. They can bet as many of their tokens as they like; winner takes all. At the end of the night the only tokens that will be counted will be the ones you won from the other team. So pirates retaining pirate tokens are worthless, but pirates having won ninja tokens would count for points. That should encourage people to get out there and tear it up.
The upside to this one is also that it is incredibly cheap. The downside is that people may need booze encouragement to start challenging other people in seemingly silly games. The success of this game (or set of games) is going to rely entirely on the competitive nature of the people being invited, so we should be fine.
Cost wise it's also going to be pretty easy. A few notebooks for paper related games, and the tokens. I'm planning on modding out some regular poker chips by spray painting them and then sticking them with stickers from my sticker-maker-thingy or stamping them if I can find appropriate stamps.
Seppuku / Walk the Plank: The foundation for this was pulled from the ever awesome Ninja Burger. It's basically hangman, but by adding teams, poster board, and forcing people 'out' once they answer incorrectly we've hopefully turned it into a pirate vs ninja party game. And all it takes for public humiliation is poster board, your peers, and a paint pen. Hurray!
We're thinking of awarding extra points to a team if they stump their opponents using a word of their own lingo. For instance Team Ninja would get extra points for stumping pirates with 'grog' while Team Pirate would get points for stumping ninja with 'lame'. (Oh Snap!)
Cost factor rocks. I already have the appropriate colored paint pens so all we need is some decent poster board. Depending on how rape-tastic Staples is feeling, this might be the most expensive thing on the list so far.
Balance Beam / Team Balance Fights: I don't really think this needs any explanation at all, despite being all the entertainment in the world that you could possibly hope for. Drunken, competitive people with foam swords beating the crap out of each other on balance beams while dressed as pirates or ninja. Oh YouTube, here we come.
The cost factor on this one is the highest so far. We'll need eight bricks, four two by fours, and some foam swords. I know that bricks and two by fours can't be that expensive, but I don't know about the foam swords. Hopefully Walmart will come to our rescue. Nothing like the foamy weapons of champions forged in the very sweatshops pits of hell!
Other: We may also be adding a neighbor-hood timed hide and seek game (Ninja getting to prove their supposedly superior camouflage and stealth skillz) and a capture the flag type game as well. However there is the 'crazy people running around after dark, some of whom have their faces obscured' reality to deal with. Yay for not being arrested! So we'll focus on getting the four slightly-less-arresty games together first.
1. Decided on party games
Cost: Free
2. Made a list of items necessary to play said games
Cost: Free
3. Made an embarrassing outline about game rules that may or not be posted here later
Cost: Only my dignity
4. Nothing at my paid job
Cost: Immediately nothing, possibly my job in the future
Total cost to date: $0.00
Cheezin! read more
on The invitation