Movie Night Party -12yr- Red Carpet Photo

My daughter chose Movie Night" for her 12 birthday party.  Invitations: I made 'film reels' for the party invitees using a narrow strip of paper and a square stamp.  Each different square had party info: Lights! (a candle) Camera! (a balloon) Action! (a present) Movie Night/Starring Christi/B------ Home Theater/Time and Date/For Ticket info call (our number).  I rolled each one and put it in a plastic film tube - the kind that come with 33mm film. On the outside of the plastic containers I taped a piece of paper which said "Movie Night Movie "12 Candles" (for my daughter's 12th bday)/Genre:

Party/Starring: Christi.  These were mailed in bubble mailers.

Decorations: We made several signs with red poster board.  I printed large letters using the computer (just black ink) which we cut out and glued to our poster board.  Each letter we then outlined with gold glitter.  We made signs saying "B-------- Home Theater" "Now Showing" and "Concessions". Out on our front walk we rolled out a 'red carpet' made from plastic table cloth that comes on a roll (red of course!).  We got ours at Cash'N'Carry but they also sell them at our party store.  At the front door we hung up our "Home Theater" sign.  Along the wall coming up the stairs into the living room we put up larg gold stars (from Party City).  At the top of the stairs we had the table (labeled with our "Concessions" sign).

Next to the table was our "Now Showing" sign (we wrote the name of the movie on the sign by hand).  The concessions table had a red table cloth (more from our roll) black and gold star shaped balloons and the cake. I already had a set of "popcorn" bowls (red and white striped with the word popcorn on them) so I used that to serve the nachos and the cheese dip.  In the living room we moved the couch and other chairs so that we had two rows of seats.  We had some chairs which were not padded so we added pillows to them so they would be more comfortable. 

In front of the tv we hung a red curtain (which we had already) to cover the tv so we could raise is "theater style" when it was time.  We also tied some more black and gold balloons (from the dollar store) out front and on the stair rail in the house.

Party Food: For eats we had typical movie theater food - hot dogs (which we'd wrapped in tin foil to keep warm in the oven after heating) nachos and pop for dinner.  During the movie we had popcorn (served in red and white stripped 'popcorn' bags from the dollar store) candy and licorice.  We opted not to hand out play money for the purchase of the concessions as we felt the kids were a little old for that.

Cake: I made a Popcorn Bowl Cake. My daughter thought that it would be cool to make a popcorn bag with popcorn on it for the cake so that's where our idea started out.  At the dollar store I happened to find gummy popcorn - perfect!  The cake was baked in pyrex bowl so it was round. After it cooled I removed it and placed it in another bowl (red). This was frosted with yellow frosting (it's kinda cool if the yellow is not totally mixed in so that there are some swirls in it).  On top of that we put the gummy popcorn.  It really looked like a bowl of popcorn!

Activities: When each guest arrived my daughter took a picture of them on the red carpet in front of the house. Each guest then got to sign one of the gold stars (permanent marker works best) on our Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Once the guests had all arrived they got their dinner and sat down in the living room for some Disney Scene It Junior.  This was actually really good because the trivia was easy for them and it got them all comfortable together.  After the cake and ice cream (we chose ice cream cups - more movie-ish) and presents they watched the movie. We served the popcorn and candy during the movie.  Our party was from 6-9 but this was a little long.  Probably 30 minutes shorter would have been perfect as we hadn't planned for anything for the last 30 minutes after the movie ended.  We ended up just throwing a Chip and Dale DVD in to pass the time. 

Favors: Each child took home his/her gold star as well as a popcorn bag with a box of movie candy and package of microwave popcorn (both from the dollar store) in it. We had tons of compliments on how creative it was and how fantastic the cake looked but we spent less than $60 for the whole thing - including the food and movie rental!"