Super Bowl Party Planner

My sister is going to a Super Bowl party and asked if I have any suggestions for something she can take - just to force her to read my blog and think about being crafty I'm going to put some thoughts on here and tell her to come check them out :) Here are a few things I have made in the past if you want any ideas:

- cupcakes topped with marshmallow buttercream frosting, tootsie roll footballs, and sprinkles in the colors of the playing teams. To make the frosting I fold marshmallow cream into buttercream - delish. The footballs are flattened tootsie rolls that I cut into football shapes and piped white chocolate laces on. I also added a little green colored frosting for some "grass". I know there is no way she is going to make these, she stopped reading this part at "tootsie roll footballs" I bet. Not hard tho so try them!

- strawberries dipped in chocolate, piped white chocolate to look like football laces.

- deviled eggs with chives on top to look like football laces.

-carve a round watermelon into a helmet shape, fill with fruit.

-a football stadium: layer 3 different dips next to each other (this is cheese dip, guacamole, and spinach dip) in a smaller rectangular dish, top with shredded cheese to divide the "field" and black olives (lined up to represent the players), pipe sour cream for the lines. Put into a larger container and fill around it with assorted crackers, chips, veggies, pretzels, etc.

And finally, a very easy idea sissy is to make some dip (cheese, 7 layer dip, whatever) and put it in a plastic football shaped bowl :)


The menu for our party this year so far is (not counting the munchies hopefully everyone else will bring):
- mini pigs in a blanket (my friend Patty requests these every year) that I make with mini turkey smoky links and crescent roll dough (cut each triangle into 6 or 7 smaller triangles then wrap around the sausage, bake at 350' until golden brown). You can make these ahead of time and freeze, then bake from frozen - it'll just take a few extra minutes in the oven.
- pulled pork I'll make in the crockpot for sliders. This pulled pork recipe is super simple: rub a mixture of lemon pepper, seasoned salt and garlic powder all over a 5 pound pork shoulder butt. I put a crockpot liner in my crock pot for easy clean up and then put the pork, one sliced onion and a bottle of beer in the crockpot on low for 10 - 12 hours. Remove from liquid and shred apart using two forks.
- I saw a recipe for "Touchdown Brownies" on Pinterest (click here) - they are topped with caramel, pretzels and chocolate chips that I think I'll make.  I'm sure they'll be good, what can go wrong with brownies topped with caramel and pretzels - salty and sweet! I will leave out the nuts for Dave who is allergic, and so far I haven't found the football shaped pretzels so will use the extra butter snaps I have left over from making pretzel hugs the other day.

Oh, and I'll use this football runner I made a couple years ago for decorating the table - it's just a long strip of green felt with white electrical tape for the lines, and numbers cut out of a piece of white duct tape sheet (they have sheets of this now in lots of different colors that has a peel off back - cut out the numbers or letters or whatever then peel off the paper backing and stick to your project as needed).

it got wrinkled in the drawer,
hopefully no one notices!

The other thing I will do is print out a football pool/squares thing for the "gamblers" among us - click here for the one I'm using. Have everyone who wants to buy a square (or 5 squares, or 10 squares!) put their initials in one of the white boxes. After the grid is filled in (there are 100 squares), rip up little squares of paper and write 0 thru 9 on them and put in a hat, someone draws the numbers while someone else fills in the 10 gray squares across the top - then put the numbers back in the hat and draw again to fill in the 10 gray side squares. We like to give prizes to whoever has the correct score at first quarter, half time, 3rd quarter and then final score. You could also give prizes for other random stuff just to keep people paying attention to the game - for instance who is going to win the coin toss, how many times they show the cheerleaders, how many beer commercials there will be...whatever you can think up!! Have fun :)