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Our year went out with a pop, fizz and clink with the perfect party to say goodbye to all the fun of last year and welcome in the new: a masquerade themed appetizer and cocktail party! There’s no better way to ring in the new year than with good friends, fancy cocktails, lots of appetizers, and a fairy lit photo booth!
When guests entered they were greeted with an assortment of Black Lace Masks to choose from. Those who came without one got a lovely assortment to choose from, keeping our party easy, classy, but still themed for a fun and decadent evening! While I originally purchased them for my Masquerade Invitations, having the extras out was perfect so that people could look through all of the masks and pick the one that was the most comfortable and prettiest for their outfits, as well as the masks themselves being a little touch of party décor for the table.
Once my guests were masked up, they were invited to craft a cocktail at my Prosecco & Pink Drink Bubbly Bar before heading to the photobooth!
The Bubbly Bar consisted of three different cocktails, which I would love to say I invented myself because they were so tasty! But in this case one of my best friend’s Christmas gifts came into play to save me time and still create some delicious drinks!
She had just received the cocktail crafting book, Let’s Get Fizzical, so we went searching for recipes and our winners from a girls night of research were: the Pink Tequila Fizz, Blush Spritz, and Valencia Cocktail #2; giving me a trio of pink hued prosecco cocktails to grace my black and gold bar. So I stuck with inventing Old Fashioneds while finding my champagne cocktails from the pros, choosing them based on what I could easily bottle into mixers. This made the bar easy for guests to fashion their cocktails in a mimosa style way; start with a mixer then top with prosecco!
Instead of crafting the cocktails for this bar, I chose to craft a DIY Bubbly Bar Menu Sign instead so guests could pick what to create based on which sounded best, all while being able to easily read what's in each drink. Each of my prosecco mixers were beautifully bottled in Vinyl Labelled Swing Top Bottles, so guests knew which mixer to add to their flutes, with them and the prosecco sharing a posh ice bucket to keep them cold all evening.
The posh black champagne flutes became a centerpiece all their own for arriving guests, becoming a gorgeous tower of flutes on my rented cupcake stand. While I had originally planned to put appetizers on the cupcake stand, this beautiful statement piece gave the perfect decadent masquerade vibes I wanted to my favorite flutes, and I’m more than happy to delegate my apps to platters when pretty bar displays like this can be created! These flutes not only were the perfect choice colorwise for my black and gold color scheme, but also an amazing accessory for us all to hold and toast with during our photo booth pictures!
All those hours crafting for my previous parties paid off, because all my non signage decor were decorations and details from my theme parties past. This started with my favorite decoration for this party, a champagne bubbles inspired photo backdrop using decorations from my Christmas trees and past parties!
Using my window’s curtain rod and the strings of paper circles from my Tissue Paper Circle Photo Booth backdrop as the base layer, I twined all sorts of fairy lights, fairy light curtains, and Christmas icicle lights between it and the photo booth frame to make a web for hanging everything else. I secured Paper Lanterns from my Zodiac Summers Eve Party for large bubbles in the different strings of lights, along with as many metallic shatterproof ornaments as I could gather from all my Christmas Trees. The result was this over the top champagne inspired beauty, which has been my favorite photo booth and helped me take my favorite group photos to date!
In addition to this over the top piece, my Silk Flower Eucalyptus Garlands also made a reappearance to add some floral flair and lush decoration that I feel must be at every masquerade. My favorite of these garlands adorned the basement bar devoted to my favorite cocktail, the Old Fashioned!
While the upstairs was devoted to prosecco and photo booths, the downstairs was devoted to games and whiskey. While I created a long table with groupings of all the chairs in my house for games, the real party area of the basement was the highly beloved Old Fashioned Bar!
My first holiday party in Omaha a few years ago, I created special simple syrups to make a flavored Old Fashioned Bar, and it was so popular I brought it back for this party too!
The Old Fashioned Bar was made up of bourbon and rye whiskeys, an assortment of bitters, and three different kinds of flavored simple syrup infusions from Old Fashioned recipes I’ve invented myself!
For this bar, I wanted a little blast from the past so I included the Honey Hibiscus Old Fashioned syrup from my favorite cocktail at my Goddess of Spring 30th Birthday Party; along with two new syrups for a Spiced Citrus Old Fashioned and a London Lemon Old Fashioned.
Just like my upstairs bar, I also crafted an Old Fashioned Whiskey Bar Sign for people to pick and mix their own cocktails, with the different simple syrups displayed in Vinyl Labelled Bottles just like the prosecco cocktail mixers.
Completed with a bucket of ice and citrus fruits for garnish, this bar was the perfect winter party addition along with being a crowd favorite!
To keep everyone full and not too tipsy, my menu was inspired by one of my own family traditions, appetizers on New Years Eve! As my Bubbly Bar demoted all my appetizers to long trays, I split them into pescatarian and carnivore trays, with the kitchen hosting an assortment of cured meats, cheese, and crackers.
My pescatarian appetizers were mostly vegetarian friendly too, hosting spinach artichoke dip, cheesy stuffed garlic bread, mac and cheese cups, and crab dip; with my dips being housed in bread bowls that were likewise demolished by the end of the night.
The meat lovers were all delighted with their tray of prosciutto and cheese croissants, pigs in blankets, and loaded potato skins; though they were more than ready to eat all the appetizers I made. The favorite you ask? Turns out my friends love (imitation) crab dip, almost every person at my party had to tell me how good it was!
After a night of games, photos, cocktails, toasts, and laughs; we woke up to omelets and leftovers to recover from an fabulous friend-filled evening. It was the perfect way to bid adieu to the past and welcome a new year full of fancy parties and the projects that go along with them!
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