[Hunger Games Party] The Food

Saturday night I threw an awesome Hunger Games party in our apartment, with help from my roommates for stuff. It was SO MUCH FUN. I took a lot of pictures and I of course will be blogging about the whole thing in parts, just like I did for the Harry Potter party I threw back in October.

I already wrote about the invitations in this post so today I'll be writing about the food. And actually, all of this is really perfect because the Hunger Games movie comes out this week! It's all totally synonymous.

I tried to incorporate things from the book as much as I could, so I kind of took on a tesserae idea for the food. In the books, tesserae is a year's supply of food if you enter yourself in the Hunger Games again. And you can do additional entries for each member of your family. So basically at the party whenever someone drank something or ate something (we said a serving or a plate, we weren't too strict on it) they had to enter their name in the reaping again! That way it made people have multiple entries in the reaping like it is in the books. I'm proud to say that it was all my idea too. :D

Deciding on the actual food was actually fairly difficult. I wanted to use food from the books, just like we did for the Harry Potter party, but it's hard because there aren't a lot of different or exotic foods in the Hunger Games books. Lamb Stew is obviously a popular one and a favorite of Katniss but we didn't really want to be feeding people meals at this party. So we came up with our own ideas.

For drinks we had Sream Water (just plain water) and Sleep Syrup (rootbeer). Both of these are in the first book when Katniss and Peeta are in the arena.

We needed something a little saltier so I bought some Doritos and we called the Tracker Jacker Wings (that was Heidi's idea). Genius! And it was good we had those because we had a lot of other sweet stuff.

Katniss roots are a plant in the book and they're what Katniss, the main character, was named after. We just bought twizzlers, even though they are red and I'm sure the roots are green or brown in reality.

Haha the "Capitol Candy" was just a lot of candy canes that we still had left over from Christmas that had been eaten yet. This was probably the only thing that was still full at the end of the party. What? People don't love 3-month old candy??

I had a sugar cookie mix and made them and frosted them with a Vanilla Buttercream frosting that we food-colored. It doesn't look like it in the picture, but the cookies were yellow, reddish-pink, and blue. We called them Peeta's cookies! If I'd had more time, I would have decorated them more. I actually didn't end up frosting the cookies, my roommate Heidi did because I had to head off to work.

I got the idea of the nightlock from Busy Bee Lauren's Hunger Games party she had. Unfortunately, I totally forgot to buy berries at the grocery store in time! Heidi had a few blueberries left over so we put those out, mostly for decoration since there weren't a ton. I liked this idea though.

Ha ha ha...the coal cake. Story time: So the night before was my roommate Olivia's birthday and we tried to make a hot fudge sundae cake for her. However, it didn't really work out and kind of got stuck to the pan and didn't taste amazing (it was okay). So Heidi took it out of the pan and rearranged it in this glass pan to make it look like it was coal or something. Really genius! I like how it looked and we did end up getting rid of the cake which was great.

Cupcakes on Fire...I got this idea from here. I had yellow cake batter that I had in two bowls (I actually made two batches so that worked out well) and dyed one batch red and kept the other one yellow. Then I just kind of layered each type of batter on top of the other and when they came out they were all cool and fire-colored on the inside. I made Vanilla Buttercream frosting and just food-colored it to be orange. Oh and I got silver cupcake cups because they just looked cool and more Hunger Games-ish.

sorry, the picture quality of this isn't great

Last of all for the food we had "Mellark Bakery Bread" (Mellark is Peeta's last name and his family owns a bakery, in case you didn't know). In the beginning plan I just had about 30 biscuits to make that I got from those one cans. They were 3/$1.00 at the grocery store. But then as chance would have it, we had a ward party the night before and they had a TON of leftover breadsticks (like at least 70) and they didn't know what they were going to do with them. I was right there and was like, "Well...I'm having a party tomorrow night, so if you want I'll just take them all." They were like "Sweet!" and I was like "Yes!" so when I got home I walked into our apartment with a huge bag full of breadsticks and my roommates were like, "Oh no..." Yes. Anyways, the breadsticks were plain and didn't taste amazing before, but Olivia was awesome and put some parmesan and garlic on top of some and cinnamon sugar on the other so that they were more flavorful. And believe it or not, we only had about ten breadsticks at the end of the party so people at almost all of them!

The party had a huge turnout and the tesserae entering idea worked out really well too! By the end of the party, our food supply looked like this:

GONE! All we had left by the end were the candy canes, a little coal cake, and a few breadsticks. Yay! Anyways that's all the food! Tomorrow, I'll write about the set-up and decorations, stay tuned!

Also, just so you know...4 MORE DAYS!!! (until the movie, duh!)

If you want to read about all the other aspects of the party, just click on the links below!

Invitations

Party Day

Costumes

Set Up/Decorations

Some Boots and a Dress

Oh my goodness I totally forgot about these pictures! I wore this outfit a little while ago and took pictures out by the train station. Sometimes I think my favorite outfits are the ones where I can just be casual and wear some rainboots with a dress and socks. It's girly but comfy, which is exactly what I love! I hate wearing things and feeling uncomfortable all day. Fashion shouldn't be about wearing something and it bothers you so much that you can't think about anything else! Those are my two cents for the day. :)

I'm sorry I haven't been the most amazing poster lately. It's hard to make time to take outfit pictures but I need to make time for it and make it a priority, because this blog is important to me. I love you guys...just thought I'd say that. And every comment I get makes me smile. :)

Why I Love My Job

I think one of the best things of my experience here at BYU has been working in the bookstore. I think for many reasons. The funny thing is, I didn't love my job there when I started as much as I love and appreciate it now...

I came to BYU as a young freshman girl and in obvious need of a job. I applied for the job at the bookstore and I also applied for another job on campus just cleaning tables and stuff in the Cougareat. I was offered the Cougareat job the same day as the interview, but I obviously wanted the bookstore job more, so I waited to find out about it. Funny enough, I'd actually applied for two different shifts in the bookstore, and when I called to find out about the job status, I think they only looked at one shift and told me I didn't get it. So naturally I called the other people and told them I wanted the job. Then, the first day my parents dropped me off, I was already feeling a little homesick and scared of being on my own. My friend Brooke was there and I went with her and her parents to get some groceries for her. Unexpectedly, I received a call from who else, but the Human Resources department at the bookstore letting me know I got the job! I was seriously so ecstatic and it was one of the first things that really made me excited to be at BYU.

Since then, I've gone from being the "baby" of the department to the one who's been there the longest (2 years and 8 months!). There have been a lot of changes in the store, from moving around departments and getting a new boss. But I have learned and grown so much through my job there as well. It's been the most constant thing that I've had since I started my schooling here and it's a great way to measure how much I have grown.

Through my job at the bookstore, I've become a lot more outgoing. It's interesting, because when I started working there, I was shy and didn't talk much to any of the other employees and didn't really put myself out there to customers. Mostly I kept to myself by folding clothes and keeping quiet. Even when the store was dead, I still wouldn't really go talk to any of the cashiers or anything. I just felt awkward and shy. I'm so different now, and I'm not saying it's been my job that has changed me, but it's a great way to see how I've changed. I greet pretty much every customer in my department, not really scared of what they will think of me or not anxious to talk to someone I don't know. When the store is dead, I find myself always talking to the other employees, and actually laughing and having fun with them. I'm so much bolder and more confident than before.

I've learned a lot of new skills that I didn't really know I had. Like I said, when I started, all I'd really do was fold and clean and do the basic things that anyone can really do. Now, I find myself always making wall displays (and enjoying it), doing really cool chalk signs, and taking initiative on different things around the department. Isn't that so cool?! I feel like I've gotten so many opportunities with this job and been able to find a lot of skills that I didn't realize I had. Isn't that interesting...it makes me wonder if this could happen with any job, if we just work hard, we might find things in ourselves that we didn't know we had.

One of the chalk signs I've done.

Probably my favorite part about working at the bookstore has been all the friends I've made and the people I've met. Some of my very best friends are bookstore employees. I feel like it's one of the places where I'm totally myself and where the people who know me there, truly know ME and who I am. I don know, whenever I go to work, I'm always happy because I'm around great people. Seriously, bookstore employees are awesome! Probably some of my favorite people in the world. I feel so blessed to be able to have so many friends that I love so much from a place that I love so much! It's just really great.

This picture wasn't taken at work, but these are two of my work friends, Jodie and Kirsten, who I love and wouldn't be as
close with if it weren't for working in the same place!

For me, the bookstore has become so much more to me than a job. It's a place where I can do things that I love and a place where I can laugh and be happy with people I love. I'm really grateful for it, and I think the biggest lesson that I've learned from this is the fact that it may take some time (I've worked here for almost three years) but everything deserves a chance. Give yourself a chance to warm up to an environment, because even if you're not the best in it or don't have a lot of friends there, things can change. Who knows, you might find something in yourself you didn't even know existed!! :)

How Far Will You Go?

If you lived in Panem and were eligible for the Hunger Games, who would you volunteer yourself for? Katniss loved Prim with all her heart and she did everything in her absolute power to keep Prim's name from being drawn. And yet, the name was still drawn, and Katniss went one step further by volunteering for her sister. Can you imagine?

Katniss knew what she was volunteering for--she'd watched the games, seen kids her own age go compete in them and die. She's seen how brutally horrible the games are, how some tributes die a slow death, tortured by the careers, and how some die quickly before they even realize what's happening. She sees Haymitch, the town drunk and the only still surviving District 12 victor who has no loved ones and who spends his days drinking, trying to forget the nightmares he experienced in the games. Katniss sees and knows all of this, yet when Prim's name is drawn, she doesn't even question yelling out, "I volunteer! I volunteer as tribute." Every single time I see that part in the trailer, I get chills. Every single time.

How far would you go for someone you love? Who could you love so much that you would be willing to volunteer your life into the Hunger Games for? It'd be a huge price to pay, going into that arena, with the odds in your favor of dying. Who, if their name were drawn from the bowl, would cause you to not even think twice and yell, "I volunteer! I volunteer as tribute."

[Hunger Games Party] The Invitation

The party planning has begun! Well it actually started a while ago but today the implementation began. I went with my roommate Heidi to post invitations on the doors of all the apartments in our ward. Also, it's really cool, because in our apartment complex there are 12 apartments, so we covered up all the numbers with district numbers as well so it's like the complex is Panem!

This is what the invitation looked like:

Anyways, that's all for now on the Hunger Games party, but there are many more plans to come and I will continue to update! :)

If you want to read about all the other aspects of the party, just click on the links below!

Food

Party Day

Costumes

Set Up/Decorations