10 Pantry Items Essential to the Fun Party

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Ten Pantry Items Essential to the Fun Party

Even if parties aren’t your thing this post will give you some cool ideas that anyone could pull off. If you are a party-kind of mom I know you’ll love these ideas. We party moms love to brainstorm new ideas!

Here are ten essential pantry items and how to create an ultra-fun party with them:

1. Food Dye
I have three girls, so we have a special affinity for the red food dye. We love pink and purple and all things… well… pink. The other colors come in handy sometimes too… but the red food dye has a special place in our cupboards. Green: St. Patricks Day, Mardi Gras, Christmas, Easter. Red: Makes pink for Valentine’s Day, Easter, Christmas and surprise days. Yellow: Nah, there’s nothing I’d dye pee color. But combined with blue, it makes green! Blue: Easter, Christmas, and combined with red it makes purple which is awesome for girly things and Mardi Gras.

What should you dye? Oh I’m so glad you asked! Pancakes, milk, Cool Whip or whipped cream, white candy melts for dipping pretzel sticks or potato chips or cookies into sugar, coconut (green-dyed coconut makes a cool edible Easter basket ’grass’), rice (use LOTS of dye—it soaks it up—and a faint hint of green on rice is just yucky), mashed potatoes, veggie dip (i.e.: ranch dressing), and fruit dips.

2. White Candy Melts
So far I’ve managed to dip the following into white candy with awesome results: ice wafers (you know those long skinny wafer-like cookies?), pretzel sticks (then roll them in sugar), graham crackers, and teddy-bear-shaped cookies. Put melted colored melts into a baggie, snip the corner off, and drizzle it over anything sweet for the prettiest decoration! All by itself drizzled on a cookie sheet, hardened and broken into artistic looking pieces it makes a great decoration for pudding or ice cream too.

3. White Cupcake Cups
The aforementioned dyed goodies look so cute broken into pieces and put in little cupcake cups. The ridges of cupcake paper fillers can be dyed as well by dipping the tips into a food coloring and water solution. Or draw on the paper cups with markers to match your colors or theme. If you’re really making cupcakes, add an extra cupcake wrapper after it is cooled to keep a solid color. Note: do not squish the folds of the paper too much while decorating it or it won’t keep its shape.

4. Chocolate Chips and/or Raisins
They make fabulous smiley faces on pancakes, puddings, and sandwiches.

5. Plastic Cups and Plates
From the dollar store you can find champagne flutes and wine glasses in various shapes and sizes. Tie a ribbon on the stem and filling with candy, pencils, stickers, favors, ribbons, etc. Or hang favors around the edge of a martini cup (filling it with something heavy in the middle first). You can place these cups in the middle of a platter filled with dips, adding height to a table. Another idea: Placing the cups upside-down in the middle of a plate and (carefully!) put another plate on top for a two-tier display. Five short cups can also make a great stand for your cake platter, giving it a little height.

6. Cranberries
For just 99 cents you can keep a bag of these in the freezer forever. Snip a few branches, grass or leaves from outside, and float them in a shallow pie plate for a center piece. Tea light candles, removed from their casing will also float among the berries making a pretty display!

7. Pudding and Dream Whip
Easiest dessert in the world—and it keeps in the pantry for months (so obviously not the healthiest). Layer these two in any flavor and color, with any cookies cupcakes or leftover cake to make pretty trifles.

8. Plastic Tablecloths
What did we do before these? The best tip I have: Layer them. Place the first layer down (last to be used) and then keep adding layers for each activity or course that might get messy. We did this with a spa party. After each ‘treatment’ we scooped up the top layer and tossed it. All cleaned up! Then the next layer was ready for messing. It was beautiful! These also do wonders to add color in large scale. They can be draped over windows for interesting colors or over white walls in a wispy way to add any sort of watery, fairy, tea-party, surreal feeling. And they make clean up a breeze!

9. Napkins and Markers
Seriously, it doesn’t take much to impress your child that you’re thinking of him or her today. A napkin, with a “Happy Tuesday! Big smooches! Love, Mommy” will make their day, or embarrass your pre-teen. And what could be more fun than that?

10. Cookie Cutters
The one of mine that has received the most use to date is the heart cookie cutter. We dip it in food color and ‘stamp’ sandwiches or cupcakes or pancakes with it. I have a giant heart that I use regularly to cut the girls’ sandwiches into heart shapes. (It is a huge waste of bread so I only do this when required—and it IS required on Valentine’s day!)

More Ideas
My favorite place to find ideas for birthday parties is BirthdayPartyIdeas.com. There are no pictures, but there are tons of great ideas there for every theme under the sun. And all of them were submitted by real people who have really done them! I write down my favorite ideas and then Google them to find pictures and maybe improve on the ideas.

Do It Your Way
Only three times a year do I go all crazy and plan parties for my girls—one for each of their birthdays. But I honestly do it because I love it, not because I feel duty-bound to perform. The rest of the year, it is super-fun to show up to the table with pink rice because it’s Valentine’s Day, or green cookies ‘cause it’s St. Patrick’s Day. And oddly enough, all the expensive hosted parties in the world, aren’t received as well as Mom’s pink rice. I haven’t figured out why, but I’ll take it!

Enjoy your kiddos today in your unique way!

Cathy Tibbles has three girls 10 and under and a hubby who was diagnosed with Celiac Sprue five years ago. She works at home in Vancouver as a full-time WordPress specialist and blogs about all things gluten-free at Strawberries Are Gluten Free.