Olympic Party Ideas

Baked wonton torches, Greek party food, and fun Olympic photo props!

The Olympics are AWESOME.  I've been watching for two days and I already feel like an expert on skiathlon and biathlon and feel really smart using new terms I've learned two seconds ago confidently in a sentence.  e.g. "Did you see that triple 'cork' that he just pulled out?!  AND he got a double hand grab!!"

We went to an opening ceremony potluck party at our friend Jen's and we wanted to bring all Olympic themed foods to share.  We went the Greek food route for our first two dishes to honor the Olympics origin.  David made a mini vegan gyro station a la these Vegan Gyros.  He made an awesome vegan tzatziki.  So easy to make just by combining plain soy yogurt, garlic, cucumber, and dill.  He set up a little station with pre cut pita, the gyro "meat", and sliced tomatoes and onions.

I made "tofu soulvaki".  I marinated some tofu in a mixture of soy sauce, oil, maple syrup, garlic powder, and cayenne then cut it into long stripes and baked for about 40 mins at 420, flipping over half way through.  After baking, skewer the strips on bamboo sticks to resemble the ubiquitous Greek street food, souvlaki.

But the dish I was most proud of was our baked wonton torches!  Take wonton wrappers and trim one corner into a round edge.  Fold one side over making a cone shape and seal with water.  Tear off a tiny piece of foil and place inside the open end to keep the shape while baking.  Spray with cooking spray and bake between 5-10 minutes at 425 degrees.  These babies crisp up quickly and vary by oven.  Check them after 5 minutes and keep a close eye on them after that.  You want them to be crisp and browned in spots, but not burnt.

You can fill them with all sorts of different dips or spreads.  I made my Microwave Vegan Buffalo Dip for the filling since it has a orange color so they looked like little lit torches after they were filled!

After the success of our Super Bowl photo booth we also crafted laurel victor's wreaths from green construction paper and paper plates, a torch from a paper towel tube, and some medals from mason jar lids and ribbon for fun photo shoots!  Even Sugar was an Olympian!

Craft Time - The Valentine Olympics!

I am a huge fan of the Olympics and am so excited to spend the next two weeks watching anything and everything Olympic related.  Bring on the curling!!!!  It's also a great excuse to try some new snack and appetizer recipes to munch on while we are hiding from the NYC winter outside and watching the games!  I wanted to decorate for Valentine's Day, but also have some Olympic flare as well, so I came up with these Olympic Ring pennant banners.  

I cut triangle "pennants" out of white paper and used toilet paper tubes dipped in paint to create the ring design on each triangle.  I used a metallic gold ribbon to string them together.  I hung some in the picture as shown and put a swag over our kitchen window as well.

As always, whenever decorating for the holidays I refer to the the one and only source for fun, easy, budget friendly crafts, my good friends The Crafty Lumberjacks.  I made this Valentine's "cherry blossom" vase arrangement inspired by their St Patty's Day clover piece.  Looking forward to making that one for next month too!

For the cherry blossoms I used a circle punch to cut out red and pink circles.  I placed two circles side by side without overlapping and stapled across the middle of them.  Bend the staple in half and thread floral wire through one of the "loops" of the staple.

I'm not a very big football fan, but was heading to a Super Bowl party with friends from college. I was trying to think of something to give us a fun activity to do in between the commercials and half time show, which is what I was watching, and crafted these fun photo booth props in the teams' colors from card stock.  So easy, cheap, and provided us with lots of fun!